Metamorphosis
by Bluebell Flame Echo
Summary: Fifteen year old Grace Kent doesn't mind having special abilities, and that's a good thing, because her life is about to change very fast and she is going to need them on her way to becoming a budding Supergirl. Fem Clark. AU season one. Supergirl Book One.
1. Homecoming

Author's Notes: Holy crap I have been working on this one chapter since a good week before Christmas and we are now fully into early January. Hope you enjoy.

On a random sidenote, Superman as a teenager is technically Superboy according to the comics, so Superwoman as a teenager would technically be Supergirl. Hence the summary. I don't know if that's what she'll actually eventually be called in-text in this book for season one, but it was convenient for summary and titling purposes. It gives you a good idea of what's to come, with or without the moniker. Why the hell actual Supergirl is not eventually called Superwoman, I have no idea, though I suspect it has something to do with sexism.

* * *

Chapter One/Episode One: Homecoming

"I know what you wished for."

Martha looked around in surprise. She'd been sitting in the family truck in the sticky heat, chin in her hand, gazing daydreamily out the window at the small country town while her husband Jonathan got groceries inside. She hadn't noticed him come back.

She registered what he'd said and lowered her head sheepishly. Tiny toddler Lana Lang inside the local Smallville, Kansas flower shop had been carrying a fairy princess wand, apparently too impatient for her costume to wait for actual Halloween day, and had asked Martha if she wanted to make a wish. Sick of all of Lana's gossipy Aunt Nell's comments about "the Kents coming into town", Martha had agreed eagerly and wished silently a little too hard for a tiny girl of her own.

"I see a little face," she said softly now, looking down. "It's all I ever wanted."

Everything else she'd been aiming for in life, Martha could have done without. The one thing she really wanted, she couldn't have. Martha was infertile.

Jonathan sighed and got in the truck beside her. "And you always wanted a daughter," he said quietly.

"Well… Yes," Martha admitted.

"She'd have been a farm girl," said Jonathan, smiling tenderly. "High aspirations for someone from Metropolis City."

"Oh, trust me," said Martha wryly. "After growing up in Metropolis City, having a Smallville daughter from your neck of the woods would have been welcome."

* * *

The spaceship hit Earth's atmosphere.

Its tiny metallic hull caught fire, as did all the green meteor rock hitting the atmosphere around it, disrupting the Artificial Intelligence robots tending to the toddler girl lying tethered to muscle exercising machines in a cloth seat bed inside the ship.

"Kala-El will be great," said Jor's cold AI self loftily from within the computer. Jor-El, a scientist, had valued sending on logic, reason, and knowledge - at the expense of some other things that had been an important but unacknowledged part of him. "She will be strong, capable of showing the people of Earth -"

"Yes, but she will also be loved," said Lara's AI self in a sickly sweet way from within the computer, little mechanical arms tending to and spoiling baby Kala. Lara, a scribe, had valued sending on ethics and emotion - also at the expense of certain other things. "Don't worry, Kala-El," she sang, "nothing will happen to you -"

Suddenly, there was a shattering crash as atmosphere hit and the ship began heating up. With a startled cry and a click, the ship's computer beeped and shut off.

It would not reawaken in the entire next twelve years.

* * *

The Kents slowly blinked their eyes open. Meteors had begun falling on Smallville and its surrounding fields during their drive through the dusty fields back toward the farm from town. They had crashed, and then…

They were upside down in the truck, tethered by their seat belts. Martha's red tulips littered the ceiling of the truck below them. The blood was rushing and pounding through their heads.

Then there was a shuffling. Jonathan looked around…

A naked, about three-year-old baby girl with a headful of dark hair and blue eyes stood there before the window of his truck.

"... Martha?" Jonathan called, bewildered, afraid he was hallucinating.

But Martha gasped from beside him, too.

The little girl knelt down to look curiously into their window, head tilted… and she smiled at them. Friendly, open, not threatening at all. Just a toddler. Just a little girl, with no real idea of the chaos she had accidentally brought in her wake. By the time she was a child, she would not even remember anything in her life until after the meteor shower.

Behind her in Miller's Field was a miniature crater with a tiny dark metal spaceship in its center.

And even as Jonathan was wondering what the hell was going on, Martha was smiling in slow wonder. She had always wanted a baby girl.

* * *

 _ **Metamorphosis**_

* * *

Twelve years later, a teenage girl with dark hair was sitting in one of the upstairs bedrooms of the Kent farmhouse, clicking through articles on her computer, morning Kansas sunlight filtering through the window beside her. The light fell onto her form. She was small, slim, and graceful - pretty, toned but in the elegant way of a dancer. Her short chin-length bob of straight, shining black hair framed her heart-shaped face and hugged her chin.

She read at speeds impossible for the human eye to follow, blue eyes clicking back and forth at an alarming rate, as she moved quickly from article to article. All were articles about incredible feats of speed and strength from humans - none of them were even close to her level, none of them fit her profile, and mysteriously all the feats had been made by males.

It was always like this, but she never stopped looking. She was curious - despite herself. She knew her mutation had to have come from somewhere. She also knew she was adopted, but she had blocked her mind off from considering all the possibilities inherent in that because they were too much for her.

Her closet and dresser were filled with sweaters, scarves, big-button long coats, leggings, and slim jeans. A few pretty pairs of boots - fit for both a teenage girl and a farm girl - sat in front of her dresser. A few bottles for a light single coating of makeup sat on the nightstand. Everything was obviously humble, cheaply bought, but not ugly for all that.

Scattered around her room were shoes, skates, and uniforms for both dancing and figure skating, along with a series of awards in both of the solitary and silent sports. Lots of old dancing and singing movies, preserved with care - Gershwin, Astaire and Rogers, Grease, Dirty Dancing - sat on a high shelf.

Robotics and engineering equipment was also scattered throughout the room, and next to the dancing awards was a Women in STEM award for the junior group and a posted newspaper article clipping of the "only girl on the heartland robotics team," complete with her black and white smiling photograph, mechanical engineering equipment posed in her hands. Posted next to that newspaper clipping was her very own first article for her high school newspaper, the Smallville Torch, a school politics opinion piece written with the kind of fervency the writer rarely expressed in real life.

Since she did both writing and science, she always typed at home on a mechanical keyboard typewriter, a particularly thoughtful gift from her friend Chloe for her birthday last year. Her favorite flower, yellow roses, was scattered throughout her space.

Huge astronomy photographs and star charts hung around her bedroom, making the whole space dark blue with white scatters, and a telling photograph of her in front of a telescope out by the barn loft window at twelve was tacked above her quilted bed. She was smiling quietly into the camera. Another picture - usually her profile portrait of choice - was of her a bit older, spread out in a field with a heated thermos of hot cocoa in hand, one hand behind her head, knees up and one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, smiling up at the night sky for a stargazing session. Next to that was a picture of her horseback riding, exploring through some backwoods outside of even the boundaries of her family farm.

Other photographs were of two best friends - a bespectacled and round-faced blonde girl with a shy smile named Abby, and a pixie-like girl with short spiky hair, colorful vintage clothes, and a confident, opinionated grin named Chloe. She was often smiling into the camera alongside the two of them, including at most junior high dances, which they had always attended together. There was a single picture of her practicing in sync with her fellows on her new high school dance team, in front of a mirror on a big wood floor space on campus.

Covering the rest of the shelves not covered by old dancing musicals were big old books: War and Peace, Dostoevsky, Les Mis. Lots of history and philosophy but big books, generally, books that got her thinking. Playing softly on her computer as she scrolled were long lists of songs, mostly 60's music, folksy music from Spain to Ireland, and synth pop. Anyone looking carefully would see that the listener had a private soft spot in her heart for love story songs.

Suddenly, her mother's voice called up the stairs: "Grace Anne Kent, you're going to be late for the bus!"

Grace clicked out at lightning speed before her mother could even mount the stairs. "Coming, Mom!" she called in a falsely cheerful voice, and she grabbed her book bag for high school and left the room, shutting the door behind her.

* * *

Grace sat down to breakfast as her mother bustled around the warm, sunny yellow kitchen with its checkered window curtains and its honey oak wood. Apples and coffee could be smelled on the inside, earth on the outside, as through the window were the clear golden Kansas farming fields, the barn, the dusty dirt roads into town, and the blessed silence.

"I've tended the gardens and fed the free range chickens," said Mom to Grace as she moved about, doing a million things at once, "so that's two of our chores done for the day. But I need you to take care of the organic produce orchard when you get home from school. It's too big -"

"For you to do yourself in one afternoon." Grace nodded. "Yeah. I understand. I'll feed the cows and the horses, too. That way all Dad has to do is tend the fields and muck the stalls."

Martha smiled. "The work of four field hands every day. Your powers really are incredible."

"They do a lot of good," Grace admitted, smiling back softly. "I am blessed."

Grace could do everything she really wanted to do at this point in her life, in spite of her own imperfect control over her incredible speed and strength - she could even do sports through solitary and feminine hobbies like dancing and skating, let out some of that pent up energy, express herself in more silent and physical ways and come across as good doing them. She had carried those abilities over into joining dance team in high school, a nice way to keep from being unpopular, though such things did not deeply matter to her. Her mental agility even helped her in the areas of science, math, and grades.

She loved her powers. She loved the idea that someday she could use them to help people.

"We need to bake more of our pies for the coffee shops in town this weekend," Mom continued. "They like buying from us. We're not expensive but we're -"

"Healthful and good for the environment," Grace finished softly. "Yeah. I like how important that is to people around here."

"Well, when something matters to a person, it carries over," said Mom. "And both of those things matter to you and to me."

Grace looked neutral, but both health and the environment were actually impassioned subjects of hers. Again, most of her favorite chores around the farm, the chores she did with her mother, were often quiet, solitary pursuits.

Dad entered through the back door, taking off the jacket he wore over his flannel shirt and hanging it on the hook by the fly-speckled screen. "Well, good afternoon, sleepyhead," he told Grace with good-natured sarcasm.

Mom handed him his cup of coffee. "Oh, and don't forget, I have class tonight so you two are on your own. Grace, make dinner. Thank God I taught you how to cook."

"Dad could always learn how to cook food himself. It's not that much more complicated than dialing the telephone and ordering a pizza," Grace suggested slyly, getting him back with a rueful stare for the sleep comment.

"Good luck getting that to happen," said Mom fervently, eyes wide and sarcastic at Grace, as Dad chuckled. Grace ducked her head and smiled.

But then Grace just had to dredge it up - the first of the old arguments with her mother.

Passive aggressively, she said, "Chloe is going shopping this weekend."

Mom stopped and closed her eyes. "Grace."

"For actually nice clothes. That didn't come from a thrift store."

"That would be wonderful," Mom sniped, "if we had the money for it. Which we don't. My deepest apologies."

Grace stood. "I'm sick of going to school in secondhand clothes," she said heatedly. "I get looks. A lot."

"And that's why you want nice clothes - so you can be more popular. Which is a horrible commentary on the modern social system and it's not a good reason to spend money your father and I don't have," Mom snapped. She and Grace were now leaning towards each other.

Dad stood awkwardly off to the side and stared pointedly into his coffee cup, not daring to venture into girl territory.

"Oh, great. Make me out to be the only one who likes looking nice," said Grace, throwing up her hands.

"What is that supposed to mean?!"

"You think appearances and professionalism are important. Just like I do. The difference is that you condemn me for it, but you have the exact same thing in yourself," Grace accused.

"I notice you didn't reply to the social commentary part."

"Oh, don't you dare get on my case about helping society. I do just as much for that on this farm as you do, maybe even more!" Now Grace was raising her voice, a rare occurrence. "And I write - I write articles -!"

"That's wonderful, honey, but it's not a drive, it's not a petition, it's nothing like what I do!" Martha had raised her own voice.

"That doesn't make it not valid," said Grace indignantly. "I'm sick of you treating me like I'm somehow lesser because I don't show my morals and opinions the same way you do, because we try to change the world in different ways. Guess what, Mom? People think petitions stuck under their noses are annoying, but they actually read articles!"

Mom gave an actual cry of indignation, straightening, her face reddening. "And yet you want to go out and shop with Chloe, whose father gets all her money from Luthor Corp, whose plant is the worst thing to happen to the environment of this town since -!"

"Don't you dare throw that back on me, and don't insult Chloe -!"

"Uh, girls?"

"WHAT?!" Martha and Grace both turned to glare at him.

Jonathan looked oddly timid for such a tall, broad-shouldered man. "Uh… Grace is going to miss the bus. If she doesn't go. Now."

Grace and Martha suddenly stiffened and straightened, twin faces falling into a quiet, hurt kind of neutrality. Both were sensitive, and arguments always hurt a lot. They had been happening more frequently lately.

"... Sorry," said Grace after a moment. "I'm just… sick of looking poor. And I'm a writer. Why can't you accept that?"

"Honey, with your gifts… at some point you're actually going to have to do something," said Martha plainly.

"Writing is doing something -!"

"And if it's any consolation, we're even more sick of being poor than you are of looking poor. Now go to school. You'll miss the bus." Mom had cut her off firmly, this time refusing to take the bait.

Grace glared for a moment, furious… then grabbed her book bag and stormed out through the screen door to head to the bus stop for school.

Martha sighed after her. "You know," she said, "I wouldn't trade her for anything, but when I pictured having a daughter, I didn't exactly picture this part."

Jonathan chuckled, came over and put an arm around her. "Said every parent of a teenager ever," he said patiently.

He loved both women. They were more alike than they liked to admit - quiet, introverted, intelligent, sensitive, good-hearted, down to earth, humble, never materialistic, never vain, impassioned, idealistic, and they both had more ambition than they liked to admit and cared more deeply about professionalism than they liked to show to people. Poverty embarrassed them, and it hurt him that was all he could offer. And both women were at heart soft, quiet romantics.

Grace's temperamental self righteousness, though - he could admit sheepishly that was all him. So was her optimism, her dry witty sense of humor, and her ability to adapt to social situations, on the good side. And her direct, black and white value on head over heart, logic over emotion, her silent trouble letting people get in close and her penchant for expressing herself in non-verbal ways… he had no idea where that came from.

He had the feeling he wouldn't find it anywhere on Earth either.

* * *

By the time Grace made it under the wooden Kent Farm archway sign and onto the dirt road of Hickory Lane, next to the red mailbox, jogging there - of course, the bus had already left in a cloud of dust. She sighed and stared after it in frustration.

"I told you she wouldn't make it," said Abby on the bus, smiling and shaking her head in good-natured, fond exasperation as she leaned back from the window.

"You can really predict her that well?" said Chloe in the seat beside her, grinning as the Kent farm fell behind them.

"Trust me. I've known Grace since elementary school; I know everything there is to know about her," said Abby, more confident and healthier as always when Grace was around. "You're newer to the group, so I'm your tour guide. And it's statistical fact: if Grace Kent moved any slower, she'd be extinct."

Abby and Chloe chuckled to themselves.

Back at the farm, Grace looked up - and smiled. Then, in a spurt of supernatural speed, she was simply gone. Not anywhere.

But way out in distant fields, a wave of invisible speed began parting the high stalks of wheat and corn on a wandering, surprisingly whimsical route toward Smallville town center, and the Smallville High campus.

Past signs:

Welcome to Smallville, Kansas! The Meteor Capital of the World! Pop. 45,001

Pleasant Meadows: Another Luthor Corp Project. Making America A Better Place To Live. New Homes Starting At $245,000.

There was a thud on the roof of the bus as in a spurt of invisible super-speed Grace leaped over it, grinning, filled with the adrenaline rush. She went back to the fields. No one noticed.

Well… almost no one.

Chloe stared up at the roof. "... Did you hear that?" she asked Abby.

"Hear what?" said Abby, bewildered. "You know, ever since you got here from Metropolis, Chloe, you've been weirded out by everything. Chill, nothing ever happens here."

"I'm telling you, there's something weird going on around here -!" Chloe began heatedly, and Abby sighed and rolled her eyes.

Abby and Chloe were still arguing when they got to school.

* * *

They were just walking off the bus and across the Smallville High campus - across the basketball courts, across the grass, and toward the front steps of the big main building - when Grace appeared behind them.

"Hey, guys."

They jumped and whirled around. Grace had already gotten her books from her locker and had actually come up to them from the main building - not from the parking lot. She blinked calmly at them.

"Weren't you - weren't you just -?" Chloe sputtered, as Abby smiled and greeted a friendly hello.

"I took a shortcut," said Grace, as if this was the only logical answer.

"Through what, a black hole?" Chloe demanded incredulously.

"She thought someone was attacking the bus this morning, too," Abby sighed, pushing her glasses farther up her nose. Abby and Grace chuckled as they fell in step together.

Indignant, Chloe hurried up from behind them. "Okay, just because everyone else chooses to ignore the strange things that happen in this leafy little hamlet, it doesn't mean that they don't happen!"

"Leafy little hamlet?" said Abby skeptically.

"To be fair, we are walking underneath trees," said Grace with a small, peaceful smile as they passed underneath shade on their way across the grass. "I've got a less contentious topic: we're still going to the homecoming dance stag as a threesome, right?" She smiled and walked backward as she turned slyly to them.

"Yup. That's why I'm going shopping this weekend," said Chloe, and Grace tried her best to keep on smiling. She told herself to be happy for Chloe.

"Lucky. My Mom is making me borrow one of her old dresses," Abby sighed. "She says it's convenient that we have the same body type." Both Abby and her Mom were fairly curvy. Abby hid it with big, baggy jeans and sweatshirts, something her two best friends had been trying to talk her out of.

Still, at this mention of fellow poverty, Grace did feel better. "I'm sure you'll look good," she said sympathetically. "You have an amazing shape."

"You do," said Chloe in her best 'friendly reminder' mode.

"Easy for you two to say. You'll never be taller or heavier than anyone you date," said Abby.

"Thanks for reminding me my feet still don't touch the floor when I sit in a chair," said Chloe jokingly, and Grace tried hard not to smile but didn't entirely succeed.

At last, Abby laughed. "What about your dress?" she asked Grace, amused.

"My Mom's making me one with her sewing machine," said Grace. "I've asked her for this slinky blue vintage sort of deal. So, you know… she does try." It was easier to admit this when Mom wasn't around, but even this was reluctant.

"Aww, that'll go perfect with your hair, I'm so jealous," Abby moaned.

"I'm going with something more modern," said Chloe. "Something kind of zippy. To go with my hair. I'm thinking purple. Purple is a good color. You know, if Abby's green we could be all the cool colors in the rainbow."

"I am going green!" said Abby, delighted. "Ugh, you should see the dress, though. It's this form fitting mermaid lacy thing." She grinned and wrinkled her nose.

"Some girls would go for that, to be fair," Grace pointed out.

"I know, I just… I'd prefer something a little simpler, more old-fashioned," Abby sighed. "I love old ball gowns almost as much as I love Rocky Horror Picture Show and theater."

"We know, you've dragged us to both several times," Grace assured her, wryly amused.

"Abby likes old ball gowns, theater, and Rocky Horror Picture Show with the same fervency that I like cappuccinos and investigative reporting," said Chloe. "Or as much as Grace likes yellow roses, her mechanical typewriter keyboard, and stargazing with hot cocoa."

"Hey, I've got a homecoming question." Grace pointed a distance off. "Who wants to take bets that Lana Lang and her new boyfriend will be named Homecoming King and Queen?" She smirked.

"Oh, Lana the cheerleader and her golden-haired quarterback intellectually challenged hottie? No way. You'd win," said Chloe immediately.

"Agreed," Abby sighed.

They all stared at Lana across the grassy green lawn. As usual, she was in lovely clothes and pink lip gloss, slim and beautiful with long shiny dark hair and tan skin and long legs, wearing a proper, reserved sweater and pencil skirt and beaming brightly, her green meteor rock necklace gleaming, she laughing perfectly in a tinkling sort of way as she signed people up for her latest school event or charity drive.

"She's a walking stereotype. I still think it's a telltale sign that you get nauseous every time you get near her," said Chloe. "I mean, I know you claim you haven't figured out why, but I still maintain that I have. It's like your immune system physically repels fake-nice popular people."

Grace sighed and smiled ruefully. "It was less convenient and less obvious when we were little girls, we were next door neighbors five miles apart, and we were the only two people in our class who liked books and horseback riding," she said. "... But yeah. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't get sucked into the cheerleader-quarterback-homecoming queen vortex."

"It's all her aunt. That's a lot of pressure," said Abby sympathetically. "Nell Potter, the local flower shop owner and real estate magnate?" she said in response to Chloe's stare. "She's raised Lana since her parents died. She's one of those gossipy, climbing garden club sorts of people. Of course, her niece has never worked a day in her life and is Practically Perfect In Every Way."

"Ugh." Chloe seemed weirded out. "Wow. People like that really exist? I guess I'm not in Metropolis anymore. Now I almost feel kind of sorry for her."

"She wants everyone to like her. She gives into a lot of peer pressure," said Grace quietly, watching sympathetically as Lana fake-laughed and fake-smiled. "That's why she does so much defensive reading, retreating into books whenever the world gets disappointing; it's why she always pretends to be so happy and nice and cheerful even when she doesn't feel like it.

"We're different. Not better, just different." Grace shrugged. "We're happy being our own people."

"Correction: You are. And now I take good care of myself because I got it from you," said Abby.

"True…" Chloe smiled. "I mean, I was always myself, but I never had any friends before Grace pulled me into your group here in Smallville. She thinks I'm crazy, but I swear she has a good instinct for people.

"Hence her vicious immunity to Lana Lang."

"Hm. Maybe." Grace smiled a little, purposefully ambiguous. The bell rang, and her eyes left Lana. "Come on," she told her two best friends, quiet but cheerful. "Time for homeroom."

As they walked across campus, people started saying hi to them in passing - well, mainly to Grace, who was one of those neutral-zone high school students that everyone "kind of knew" and was a little bit curious about.

"Hi, Kent."

"Hey, Kent."

A talented member of the dance team, pretty but not intimidatingly rich, intelligent but quiet and capable of getting along with most people, almost no one had a problem with Grace Kent. She was not universally beloved, but no one had a problem with her. Not even the people who didn't secretly envy her seeming immunity to what people thought of her -

Like Lana as she turned to watch Grace leave, twisting in the arms of her blond senior quarterback boyfriend Whitney Fordman.

It had always made Lana feel not so nice, that Grace had never seemed to want to be friends with her. It was weird, because Grace was one of the only people Lana wanted to like her back, and Grace was one of the only people who didn't.

"Something wrong?" Whitney asked.

Lana gave her best fake smile and turned away in Whitney's safe arms, away from Grace saying hi to her third group in passing, her third group of the countless high school crowds Grace was a passing member of but never really seemed to get close to. All accompanied by two of the weirdest, most alternative, and most loyal girls in school.

"Everything's fine," said Lana in her best soft, tinkling, the voice befitting of the perfect daughter of her perfect mother, and she kissed Whitney Fordman because he was safe and she was supposed to.

Grace went through the big blue double doors into the main hallway and disappeared. The entire time she had greeted people, her expression had remained passive; she had never revealed a single thing to anyone, but she was so calm people felt safe around her anyway.

* * *

Everyone was in class except one.

An unnoticed boy, skinny and pale with straw-colored hair, he looked around, hunched shoulders, hands in his pockets, and then skittered toward an old football trophy case from several years ago. There was a bandana wrapped around one of his hands. He looked in the case, and rage filled his expression.

His bandana fist smashed through the glass of the trophy case.

But instead of stealing a trophy, he took out an old, framed photograph of three grinning, now-former football players in uniform. "It's payback time," he whispered at their gleaming visages.

He left campus again with nothing but the photograph.

* * *

A blue-grey sports car zoomed down the road somewhere else in Smallville.

With a squeal of tires, it turned up a long drive and stopped with an irritated lurch in front of a huge industrial factory building, way out on the outskirts of town. The sign outside the factory: Luthor Corp Fertilizer Plant No. 3.

A young man in his twenties stepped out, in rich Metropolis City type expensive clothes, mostly semi-formal black with black leather driving gloves. He was slim, fit, and completely with bald, with sharp, icy chips for blue eyes in a pale, handsome face.

Anyone even in Smallville would have known who he was. Lex Luthor, Lionel Luthor's son, had been banished from Metropolis after a particularly public stunt of reckless drunk driving. He was soon to be taking over the Luthor Manor and Luthor Corp fertilizer plant here in Smallville, Kansas.

Needless to say, he was coming kicking and screaming.

He sighed, looked around at the desolate fields surrounding him under iron grey skies, and slammed the door shut. "Thanks, Dad," he said with quiet sarcasm, a single sentence when no one else was around revealing his displeasure.

Then he squared his shoulders and walked up with eminent calm toward the plant.

Sure enough, the license plate on the back of his fancy sports car read: LEX. Metropolis, USA.

* * *

"I don't see how you do it all."

Grace turned in surprise to one of her dance team partners that day after school, everyone already dressed in gear right before they were about to head out onto the floor to practice their latest routine.

"Do all of what?"

"The robotics team, the school newspaper, the dance team, and the ice skating," said the girl, looking her over. "Don't you ever get tired or overloaded?"

Grace gave a serene smile. "Of course. I'm only human," she said sweetly, and the girl didn't notice the sharpness to her eyes. No one ever did.

In reality, it was simple. Three days a week busy with all her hobbies except the paper, which required one article per week and could be spaced out over an entire seven days. Then her farm chores at the end of each day.

… Her supernatural strength, speed, and intelligence helped.

"Okay, girls, let's go!" their dance team coach shouted from her place in front of the mirror, clapping her hands. "Middle of the floor now, let's go, let's go!"

Everyone hurried into the center of the floor. The routine began, and so did Grace. She had a good memory and, well, everything else was physical. Natural.

Grace did not express herself well through words. She was a woman of action, something her mother was constantly and irritatingly trying to remind her. And she expressed herself best through graceful movement - through dancing. There was a quiet, even silent elegance to the way she moved, an expressiveness emanating from her body that was somehow not evident in her perfectly smooth, neutral face.

The routine ended and her coach held her back for a couple of minutes at the end.

"You know, Kent. These kids all seem to like you well enough, are even impressed by you, but I don't know what to make of you." Grace blinked at Coach Wilson, Annie Wilson, a massive, larger-than life, and yet eternally graceful woman with a gift for crippling bluntness off of the floor. "You never say shit. You never show anything about yourself. It's like your door is always closed to almost everyone. And if I hadn't seen you with friends and family, or on the dance floor, I'd say you were all head and no heart.

"But that's not quite true. When you dance, you speak volumes. I ain't never seen anyone move like you," she said with typical directness. "Don't lose that, okay?"

Grace smiled slightly. "... Thank you, Coach Wilson," she said, looking down. Then she looked back up, just a little mischievously. "Since you claim to know nothing about me, I'll tell you that I value directness. That's probably why we get along. Because neither of us has any patience for people who don't say what they mean and mean what they say." Her eyes were sharp again.

Coach Wilson stared after her in surprise as she walked away, through the door, into the sunlight, and out of sight - then Coach Wilson smiled slightly in exasperation and shook her head. "Weird girl," she said, but it was not meant as an insult. "No patience for indirectness? She is honest when she does speak, I guess. Well, that explains her choice in friends…"

And Coach Wilson began gathering mat-like equipment off of the dance floor.

In a twist of the ultimate fate, as the last bus had already left, Grace had decided not to call her father to come pick her up. He had enough to do back on the farm with Mom at her afternoon and night classes.

She took the walk home through the backwoods outside of town instead.

* * *

Grace was walking across a bridge, an overpass above a river connecting two tree-lined back roads, when it happened. She was in the bike lane, and she watched as a flatbed truck passed her going the other way in the farthest lane. A metal coil fell from the bed of the truck and into the road. The truck rumbled on past, unnoticing.

Usually not a big deal. People drove slowly in Smallville, especially on treacherous back roads. Most of them didn't drive many fast or expensive cars to begin with.

Lex had gone for a drive. He had walked through the empty, gloomy, drafty manor house, consumed with the falsity and grimness of it all, with the mundanity of where he had been sent, the dead end it represented after an incredibly short career of doing stupid things. So he'd gone for a drive - looking for something - anything - that might make him feel better about the fact that he now had to live in what he felt was essentially a few buildings built on top of a long field full of cow shit.

So far, the empty, forested back roads did not look promising.

His cell phone rang. He took it out of his pocket to look at it, still zooming down that back road just as he would have a street in Metropolis -

He looked up just as he was coming upon the metal coil.

Frantically, he tried to pump the brakes and shift gears, throwing his cell phone away, swearing internally. His car hit the coil and he actually felt it hydroplane - he felt himself veer off and lose control. He looked up - and he was about to hit a dark-haired teenage girl standing in the bike lane.

Their eyes met, and he had just enough time to read the panic in her face and realize he was about to kill someone before he hit her. His head hit the steering wheel, the airbags inflated, and he was knocked out.

The sports car hit Grace, and it shoved her through the metal bridge railing into the water far below. She felt the impact through the water as the car nosedived into the river surface after her.

The driver. The driver was still in there.

Grace swam against the current over to the sports car. The man was strapped into the sports car driver's seat, unconscious, his precious cell phone floating near his head. Bubbles came out of his mouth, which meant he was taking in water. She had to work fast.

Grace grabbed the edge of the car roof and peeled it back like the lid of a tin can, ripping it off the car and throwing it clear away. She tore the seat belt apart, took the young man into her arms, and swam quickly upward until they hit the surface of the water and made air.

There was gasp from her - but not the driver. He wasn't breathing. Not good.

She swam against the current one more time and dragged him, both soaking and dripping wet, onto the muddy riverbank on his back. She put her ear to his mouth - Confirmed. No breath.

She put her lips to his cold ones, breathed into his mouth, and pumped his chest. She did it again. Then again. His face was getting whiter, turning blue. This was not good. He just lay there, still.

"Come on," she hissed. "Don't die on me." She dared to give his chest an extra-hard little shove.

And he gasped, his blue eyes flying open. He turned and began coughing up water onto the muddy riverbank. Blood returned to his face in a remarkably quick flush.

Grace gave him a clinical once-over. No overt signs of hypothermia. He had a cut on his face where he'd hit the steering wheel but he was otherwise fine.

She sat back on her heels in relief. Her book bag was trashed and his car was ruined, but those were small things in comparison to lives.

Lex had just had what he supposed was a surreal near-death experience. He'd been flying. Held in a pair of safe, warm arms, flying over Smallville. And for once, he wasn't afraid of heights, had no fear he would fall, and for the first time he had seen the beauty to Smallville, Kansas, instead of the dead-end everyone from Metropolis probably saw when they first drove here.

Then he'd woken up on a riverbank choking up water. He looked around - and there was a girl kneeling there silently.

She was pretty, beautiful even, lovely and reserved with thick dark hair cut close around her face, dripping wet with clinging clothes… And she was young. Looked about high school age. So he cut that thought off before it went any farther.

Her brilliant blue eyes watched him, but she made no move or sound. She was entirely still and elegant, her head cocked as she knelt beside him, and it was impossible to tell what she was thinking.

She was the girl from the bike lane, he registered.

"You're… you're a girl." It was one of the stupider sentences he'd ever come up with, but in Lex's defense he was pretty sure no oxygen had been going to his brain for at least a full minute.

At last, the girl smiled a little, her eyes shining mischievously. "Last time I checked," she said in a soft, rich voice, sounding amused.

"Sorry, I - I just could have sworn I hit you. I didn't mean to -" Lex sighed, beginning to sit upright and recover himself. This was turning into a weird day.

"I know. It's okay," she said simply, smiling, and she was so calm and peaceful that oddly enough he believed her. "You didn't hit me. I jumped out of the way in time. After all, if you'd hit me I'd be -"

And she stopped completely… and turned slowly, fearfully, back to the bridge. She took in the mangled, gaping hole of the metal railing she had been pushed through.

"I'd be dead," she whispered in realization. So why wasn't she?

The answer came to her easily enough: in addition to strength, speed, and inhuman intelligence… she had invulnerable skin.

She had just never realized it before because no one had ever hit her with a car.

"You were brave." She turned back in surprise to the man she had saved. "To go in after me," he said seriously.

Grace recovered and smiled. "Maybe not as much as you'd think," she said, sweet as always, still with that same sharpness to her eyes.

Her new information was filed away into a compartment in the back of her mind for private digestion later. Skin of steel - it was terrifying, but that would come in handy.

* * *

State troopers were now combing the riverbank. A crane was trying to pull the ruined car out of the bottom of the river, set there on the bridge with no cars passing by. Lex watched from a distance as the girl sat on a rock with a towel for both shock and warmth that had been draped around her shoulders. A similar blanket was around his.

She did not look at him, she did not shiver, and she did not move. She sat there, totally calm. Weirdly, there was nothing icy in her demeanor. Somehow, she emanated a comforting warmth into the air around her, a silent kind of solemn serenity, without ever moving a facial muscle.

A truck screeched up and a man who looked nothing like her sprinted out of the truck and down the bank to her. For the first time, she seemed human, concerned for her father.

"Grace! Honey, are you alright?" The man put his hands on her shoulders and looked frantically close into her face.

Grace. A name at last.

"Yeah," said Grace simply, nodding. "I'm okay." She was still gazing up into her father's face in earnest concern.

Her father turned to the nearest state trooper. "Who's the maniac that was driving that car?!" he yelled, demanding.

Lex took a bracing breath, walked forward and held out his hand. "That would be me," he said in a perfectly confident business voice. "Lex Luthor."

Grace's father looked him up and down and ignored the hand. An ugly, suspicious expression had formed over his face. Slowly, Lex lowered his hand.

Definitely not Metropolis.

"I'm Jonathan Kent," the man bit out at last. "This is my daughter Grace."

And with this brusque reply, he turned his back on Lex and wrapped his big, dusty coat around Grace's shoulders. It was plain neither of them had money, not that he had expected any locals to.

"Thanks for saving my life," Lex said to Grace, and he meant it. He was still waiting for the other shoe to drop - for them to tell him what they wanted. And for once, he would be happy to supply it.

Grace looked down. "I'm sure you would have done the same thing," she said softly, and that, it seemed, was that. Grace stood, and she and her father moved to climb the bank and walk back to their faded old truck.

Was it a lawsuit they were planning?

Lex walked quickly toward Jonathan Kent. "You have quite an extraordinary daughter, Mr Kent, if there's any way I can repay you -"

Jonathan stopped and looked him dead in the eye.

"Drive slower."

As they walked away, climbed into their truck, and drove away, Lex realized there would be no lawsuit and no demands. Perhaps because of her father's immediate dislike, that was… apparently all they wanted.

Lex turned back to his sports car being pulled out of the riverbank by the crane. He could see it, dangling there at last, gleaming in the sunlight. It was completely mangled, but the entire roof of the car had clearly been torn off.

So he hit a piece of railing and fell into a river. But he didn't hit a girl. She ran in after him and got him out - through a window, supposedly. And swam him to shore. Then she and her father left, asking for absolutely nothing in return for this feat of incredible bravery. They were apparently just nice people.

Great. So what the hell had happened to the roof of his car?

He stared at the sports car and wondered if he himself was satisfied with leaving things on this final note. More privately… he wondered if he was happy never talking again to a girl who had given him this kind of miraculous near-death experience, who had literally saved him from the brink of death by swimming him to shore and providing immediate CPR resuscitation.

Lex enjoyed intellectual mysteries and he didn't have his life changed for the better very often. This girl fit both qualifications. Moreover, she seemed nice - genuinely nice - an intriguing safe harbor. She was very young… but they could be friends. There was nothing wrong with that. He'd never had an uncomplicated female friendship before. It might even be refreshing, especially coming from someone who carried none of the baggage of Metropolis.

But that meant he would have to make the next social move. He would have to actually send a gift to someone who hadn't voluntarily asked for or required one.

A first on all counts.

* * *

That evening at Frank's Auto Repair, Frank himself was staying up late alone in the garage working on a car. He had just started the engine of the car with a little burst of success when he slammed the cab shut and there was a teenage boy standing there, staring with big eyes.

Frank jumped. "Geez, kid, you scared the crap out of me." He leaned against the car, breathing deep. For a moment he thought he'd been in actual danger.

Then he paused and walked toward the kid speculatively. Pale and skinny with straw-colored hair and a hunched, skittering gate, he looked oddly familiar - a face from a long time ago. From Frank's high school years, he realized.

"Hey, don't I know you? You look like that Scarecrow kid. Where the hell you been?"

The boy gave a slow, strange smile. It crept silently, a bitter, humorless ghost of a thing, over his face in the shadows of the dark garage corner.

"Hey, freakazoid," Frank snapped, mainly out of fear. "Wake up." He had reverted in that moment to his own high school self. He poked the boy in the shoulder - and got an electric shock that seized his whole body up, that threw him clear across the garage with a clanking of tools and a crash. Frank had just slammed into and knocked over a tool cart in a burst of hot pain.

Frank backed up on his back slowly in pain, dragging himself, as the boy walked silently forward without a ghost of a smile now. "Look," Frank pleaded in a shaky voice, "that was twelve years ago, man, it was just a game." He was still in terrible pain. "What do you want?"

He sounded like a scared kid.

Jeremy smiled again. "To play." He tilted his head in the darkness.

Then he lashed out and grabbed Frank's chest in a rush of electric shock, slamming him up against the garage wall, snarling and holding Frank down as he struggled and seized… until Frank slowly slumped over, slowly stopped moving at all.

On a far wall was the same framed photograph of the three former Smallville High football players. One of them was Frank. As Frank seized and then stilled, in a single crack the glass of the picture frame snapped.

* * *

Grace had just gotten off the bus back at home after school the next day and was walking across the long lot surrounding the farmhouse - when she paused in surprise.

Sitting there out back in the dirt was a gleaming, brand-new Subaru Forester with all-wheel drive. It had a big blue bow on top of the hood.

Mom was nearby working on a tractor, closer than Dad who was using the grinding loud wood chipper out in the barn, so when Grace walked in wonder up to the new car she asked curiously, "Hey, Mom, whose is this?"

"Yours," said Mom dryly. "It's a gift from Lex Luthor."

She held out a card, clearly from the gift giver.

"Well," said Grace uneasily, "I mean, I'll give him this, he understands the driving needs of a farm girl out in the Kansas backwoods better than I thought he would. He got me a huge car with all wheel drive instead of a tiny, trendy sports car. But…"

She took up the card. Its front was embossed with the initials LL, a letterhead that must usually be reserved for business clients and particularly important gift receivers. Her eyebrows raised in disbelief, she opened the card and read out loud, "Dear Grace, Drive safely. Always in your debt, A maniac in a sports car."

"Your father has the keys," said Mom. "We wanted to talk to you about this… Your father especially."

She waved to Jonathan. He turned off the wood chipper, took off his goggles, and came over.

"I know how much you want it, honey," he said preemptively, "but you can't keep it."

"I know," said Grace quietly.

"The Luthors…" Jonathan sighed, laughed in disbelief, looked off to the side and swore. "Those rich Metropolis City people, they think they can just buy anything."

"I know."

"You know how the Luthors got their money? Do you remember Mr Bell? He used to let us go fishing on his property? How about Mr Guy? He used to send us pumpkins every Halloween?"

"I know," Grace repeated more forcefully, looking at her father meaningfully. "Lionel Luthor promised to cut them in on a deal. He sent them flashy gifts. Then once they'd sold him their land, he went back on his word and he had them evicted. And everybody knows all those stories, because no one from Smallville acts that way. And even if Lex isn't like his father, that's still where all his money is coming from."

"Not to mention the horrible damage that plant is doing to surrounding Smallville land," said Martha worriedly. "I'm not sure I like a Luthor actually moving in here."

"I'm not sure I like the idea of Smallville being an appropriate banishment," said Grace dryly. "And… yeah. I know. I don't want money from someone who dumps toxic waste all over the countryside they've forced their foot into."

"More to the point, it's just weird!" said Dad heatedly. He was growing angry, his voice getting louder. "It's just weird, for an older man to be giving a gift to a teenage girl! It's -!"

"Inappropriate," said Grace quietly, looking down. "I know. And I don't need a reward for helping people, so… I'll give the car back. Hey. At least he didn't buy me a dress or a diamond necklace." She looked up and she smiled weakly.

"Don't give him any funny ideas," Dad warned, his eyes flashing.

"Don't worry. Exactly zero chance of that," Grace promised. "Hey… can I talk to you guys about something?" she added, more quietly and uneasily, looking down. "I… I just think you should know… Lex's car actually did hit me. At over sixty miles an hour. It's… it's the one part of the story I haven't told you yet. I was just… processing."

She looked down awkwardly in the stunned silence.

"Then… then why aren't you injured?" said Mom incredulously.

"Well, exactly." Grace looked up seriously. "I think I'm not just fast and strong and smart. I think my body might be invulnerable."

Her parents looked worried.

"Guys… you know I don't hate my abilities. You know I don't hate being different. I love my abilities; I love that they just saved a man from drowning the other day. But… I need answers. I'm fifteen and it's time I got answers and I need them. So… if you know anything… I need you to tell me now. Because I don't know what's happening to me."

She threw her arms wide. Grace's expression was desperate and pained, confused.

Martha and Jonathan looked at each other. "Imagine what will happen," said Martha, "if we don't tell her and then she finds out herself."

Jonathan sighed, looked away.

"... Tell me what?" said Grace slowly, frowning, looking from one to the other.

"Grace… Grace, go up to your loft above the barn. Sit down near the telescope - the one you inherited from me, the one I got from my father. Your mother and I… will be up there in a couple of minutes with some answers."

Grace's father wouldn't look her in the eye.

"No," said Martha firmly, intervening. Both Jonathan and Grace looked up in surprise. "No, we're doing this around the kitchen table in the nice, warm house as a family. We're all going inside together, and that's that."

* * *

When Jonathan sat down at the table with Martha and Grace, Martha put a hand over Grace's warmly. Jonathan unwrapped what he had been carrying in a piece of cloth. It was a long metallic tablet with geometric writing that looked a little like Arabic written up and down on it.

"Grace, I want you to take a look at something," he said uneasily, handing over the disc. "I think it's from your parents, your - your real parents."

Grace looked at the disc blankly. "... Well, what does it say? What language is it?"

Something inside her parents seemed to relax.

"We don't know," said Martha slowly, exchanging a glance with Jonathan. "Your native language."

"My native…? Couldn't you just take a picture of this thing and search for the language on the Internet?" said Grace, bewildered. "Wasn't I adopted from some specific place and people? How do you not know what language this is?"

Martha looked down. "We've tried to decipher that tablet for years," said Jonathan. "But it's not written in any language known to man."

"... What does that mean?" said Grace slowly, frowning.

"Grace - Grace, your parents weren't exactly from… around… here," said Jonathan awkwardly.

"Oh, really!" Martha exploded at last. "Grace, you're an alien!"

Chirping crickets could be heard outside the back screen door.

"The best we can figure is that your planet must have colonized ours. We share the same basic structure, but you have powers we don't," said Martha, pushing ahead with determined tenacity. "We found you completely naked, about three years old, toddling around near a crater carrying a miniature metallic spaceship on the day of the Smallville meteor shower. And that's all we know.

"Your birth and adoption paperwork says you're from Metropolis, but all that is faked. We've never been able to open the ship, it's never given any sign of life, and all that was outside of it was this disc.

"We'd never been able to have kids and we didn't like the idea of giving you over to the government to become a much-feared science experiment, so we took you home with the ship under a tarp and we kept you," Martha finished in an iron-tough voice.

She turned to Jonathan.

"Your parents weren't from around here? Really?"

"I didn't know what to say!" Jonathan protested.

"Almost no one is from around here! It's a cow town in Kansas!" said Martha, exasperated. "And you really were a little kid when you came, and you really don't seem to remember anything," she added to Grace. "As far as we can tell, it was just you and the meteor rocks that came to Earth. So… go ahead and protect whoever you feel you can, because I don't know why else you're here. We… we don't have all the answers, honey, and we wish we did."

Grace was sitting there, numb, shell-shocked. "... Please tell me this is a practical joke," she said quietly.

"We need proof," said Jonathan firmly, standing. He turned to Grace. "We stashed your spaceship in the storm cellar."

So they walked outside in the grass - it was now early evening - and climbed down into the dusty, spider-filled storm cellar, inching their way down the steps in the blackness until Jonathan flicked the light on. Everything was covered in tarps. Old pieces of farm equipment, Grace had always assumed, just like anyone else would. And most of it probably was old farm equipment.

Dad pulled off a tarp and revealed a weirdly gleaming, child-sized metallic spaceship. The metal was very dark, not a kind she had ever seen on Earth. It was too small for her now, and there was a little rounded frontal piece for navigation and steering.

And she felt like she should remember this, the thing she had come to Earth in during the meteor shower, but all she could think was that it was like she was looking at a piece of equipment that was as alien to her as it was to everyone else.

Well. That explained a lot.

"You." She was speaking mechanically now. She winced slightly and put a hand to her temple, her head aching from the effort of compartmentalizing everything and holding everything back, laying it out mentally into a logical, sequential order.

It wasn't just her body, after all, that wasn't human.

"You," she continued mechanically, her face working, sometimes still, sometimes overwhelmed with a sheer depth of emotion she was not sure humans could feel, "you. Should. Have told me. This. Sooner."

"Grace, we were just trying to protect you -" Jonathan began, worried, but this was too much and at last Grace exploded into a fast flurry of words.

"But past a certain point it wasn't protecting me anymore, it was hurting me! I went through all of junior high without knowing why I always felt so different from everyone else, always afraid of revealing the wrong thing, always afraid of coming off as a freak! You should have told me years earlier; at least by junior high I should have known!"

Martha and Jonathan had never seen their daughter this openly furious and emotional; it was like some clasp holding everything back had come undone. Her face was exquisitely painful, expressive, her ocean blue eyes wide and distraught.

Then, suddenly, she took a deep breath, straightened, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, her face was cold, emotionless but not in her usual healthy way.

"Grace," said Martha desperately, "we're sorry."

"... I know," said Grace, and even for her parents it was impossible to tell what she was feeling. "I… need to take a walk and think. I need some time to process this information."

She looked away, pained, and she quietly left the storm cellar. Somehow the silence was worse than if she'd stormed off shouting. Arguments and shouting could have been handled. But what was to be done with someone who simply shut themselves off from doing or saying anything?

Grace left the farm, heading for the woods in the moonlight.

* * *

Lana rode on her chestnut mare into the cemetery, carrying the usual sprig of wildflowers. She dismounted - and heard a rustling noise in the dark and empty graveyard.

She whirled around. "Who's there?!" she demanded, scared and defensive.

"Relax, it's me," came… Grace's voice? And it sounded oddly… stuffy. And she emerged from behind the statue of the winged angel she had been curled up underneath, at the foot of. Her face peeked around the statue in the moonlight.

It took Lana a moment of squinting to realize she was seeing something she wasn't sure if any of her classmates had ever seem. Not only did Grace Kent look upset… Grace Kent had been crying.

"Sorry," said Grace, "I didn't meant to scare you. I'll leave." She stood and made to hurry away.

"Grace, wait." Lana walked over quickly, and for once Grace didn't shy away. She also stopped walking, though she didn't look at Lana. "I just wasn't expecting to see anyone else out here. Are you okay? What are you doing all the way out here?"

"I… don't think you'd believe me if I told you," said Grace slowly with a strange, bitter sort of smile. "And… am I okay? I'm a teenage girl. Are we ever okay?"

She looked over at Lana, her lips quirked in amusement, and Lana laughed.

"No, we're not," she chuckled. "Fair point."

She let Grace slide past both questions. Everyone had their secrets, Lana included, especially when it came to graveyards.

"What about you? What are you doing out here?" Grace asked quietly, looking over at Lana with her head cocked.

Lana smiled. "Can you keep a secret?" she asked quietly.

"I'm the Fort Knox of secrets," said Grace readily, sounding puzzled. "They couldn't torture it out of me, I promise."

"I… came out here to talk with my parents," Lana admitted, wincing, knowing how bizarre this sounded. Grace's eyes widened. Lana laughed in embarrassment, forcibly cheerful, and turned away. "You must think I'm pretty weird. You know, conversing with dead people."

"I don't think you're weird. I'm an adoption, too, remember?" said Grace sympathetically. "I wish I could figure out what my parents would have said. Do you remember yours?"

"They died when I was three," said Lana quietly.

"That's why you live with Nell."

"Yeah. What about you? Were you…?"

"Metropolis charity," said Grace readily, her face revealing little. Lana envied that kind of poise. "I was three when I was adopted. And, no. I don't remember them."

"You still have parents, though. That's pretty cool," said Lana enviously.

"It is. My parents are the greatest," said Grace immediately, looking down. Then, wistfully, "... But… do you ever do this? Do you ever go back over it in your head? Feel like your life was meant to be something different? Imagine over and over in your mind what it would have been like if you'd grown up with your birth parents? I've been sitting here tonight, trying to imagine… and it was a closed adoption, and I don't remember anything. So I can't. But I've been sitting here for about half an hour, wondering if I would have felt like I fit in better where I was meant to belong."

"You… always seem to belong," said Lana in surprise. "I envied that about you. You always seemed so comfortable in yourself."

"I was weird."

"You are… enigmatic," Lana admitted, smiling. "Brilliant. Talented. Quiet. Graceful. And, yeah, a little weird, with eccentric friends. But… you know, you made it work for you. At least, it always seemed that way."

"I could say the same thing about you. You always come across like your life is perfect. I always have wondered if you meant to do that," said Grace quietly, honest.

"I'm…" Lana looked down, smiling determinedly; she had never admitted this to anyone before. "I've been trying my entire life to be my Mom," she admitted. "I don't ever feel like anything clicks, though. I don't feel like I was meant to be… who I'm trying to be. I'm sorry, does my rambling make any sense at all?"

"... Yeah," said Grace seriously. "It does."

"I guess… we're both really good actresses." Lana looked over at her and smiled, Grace smiled back with equal sadness, and for a moment they had totally connected.

"The best," said Grace. "Don't you know? All orphans are."

"Sometimes," Lana admitted, "I'll dream I'm at school, waiting for Nell to pick me up. But she doesn't come, so my parents drive up. And they're not dead, they're just really late. Then I get in their car and we drive back to my real life in Metropolis. That's usually when I wake up. And for a minute, I'm totally happy… until I realize I'm still alone."

"It's funny, isn't it?" said Grace. "All those people around you and in the ways that matter, you can still feel like you're the only one of your kind."

"I don't feel that way so much tonight," Lana admitted, smiling.

"... Me neither," Grace admitted. "You know, I have a weirder dream. I'm floating in a sky full of stars. That's why I like stargazing and astronomy so much. I like to look up at the sky and wonder what it's like up there, in space or on other worlds. For some reason, when I look up at the night sky, no blue covering it… I always feel like I'm home. On a cold night… I don't know, it's just perfect.

"So I'm floating in this dream. And usually I'm afraid of heights, but right then I feel safe and carried and protected, and I'm not afraid at all. And I hear these voices talking to me… very distant. I can't make out what they're saying. But I just know the people carrying me and talking to me are my birth parents.

"And that's when I wake up."

"You always wake up," said Lana quietly. "It's the number one rule."

"Yeah, well. Life sucks, I guess." Grace sighed and shook her head as if to clear it, returning to reality. "I still have a life here, and it's a happy one, so I put up with all that. I guess I just… needed to get it off my chest to someone who seemed to understand. So… thank you."

"No problem," said Lana, smiling. "I liked this conversation, too. Hey… this sounds weird, but…" She wrinkled her nose and smiled. "Do you want to meet my parents?"

"Uh… sure," said Grace, nonplussed, and they walked over to Lana's parents headstones. Lana knelt and placed the wildflowers down at last. Grace knelt down beside her.

"Mom, Dad, this is Grace Kent. She's a friend from school." Lana used the word friend, and Grace didn't protest. "Say hi," she told Grace.

Grace cleared her throat. "Er… hello, Mr and Mrs Lang," she said awkwardly. "It's very nice to meet you."

Lana pretended to listen to something and laughed. "Yeah, she has many skills, but smooth social interaction isn't one of them. It's rude to say it out loud, though, Dad."

"She has many skills but smooth social interaction isn't one of them. Truer words have never been spoken," Grace muttered wryly, and Lana giggled. "So. You should know," said Grace matter of factly to Lana's parents, "she might not have told you, but Lana is very popular in school."

Lana ducked her head and smiled.

"She wears lots of pretty clothes, and she gets really good grades. She especially loves reading and writing. She's a cheerleader, and a charity volunteer worker; she does a lot for the school and everyone likes her. It's kind of unfair how amazing she is," said Grace matter of factly. "Oh, and she's dating this guy. Senior quarterback football player type. I can't speak for you, Mr Lang, but for my Dad he'd definitely have been a threaten-him-with-a-shotgun kind of boyfriend. Definitely someone to watch out for." Grace nodded.

"Hey!" said Lana indignantly, but she was grinning.

"Well, it's true. He's a senior, and a football player, and he is really hot," said Grace fervently.

"He's not like that -!"

"Oh, so he's not hot."

"He's -! Yes, okay, he is very hot," said Lana, and she was by this point helpless with laughter.

"But rest assured, Mrs Lang, his sexual appeal has absolutely nothing to do with why your daughter is dating him," Grace continued meaningfully.

Lana shoved Grace in the shoulder, paralyzed on the ground with laughter. "You're so mean! Shut up -!"

"And this," said Grace, "is why no one ever introduces me to their families." She smiled cheerfully.

"This," said Lana at last after she'd stopped laughing, "is I think the best graveside conversation I have ever had."

Lana and Grace were laughing and chatting with ease by the time Grace had walked with Lana back to her barn, helped her stall the horse - they started talking about horseback riding, and then they got into books, and it turned out they liked a lot of the same things. Finally, someone to talk riding and culture with!

And Grace was walking with Lana back toward her house, Lana feeling almost absurdly cheerful.

"Do you realize this is the longest conversation we've ever had?" said Lana incredulously. "We should do it again."

"Yeah… we should," Grace agreed, with a surprised little smile.

Just then Whitney came down off the porch to see them. He smiled, said, "Hey, Kent," and he got close…

And suddenly Grace felt sick. Just like she always had around Lana, but hadn't all night tonight. So why was Whitney now…?

And then she saw it hanging from his neck. The glowing green meteor rock necklace. Lana had let her boyfriend wear her necklace like a chain, in the same way she was often seen wearing his letterman's jacket.

Meteor rock. Alien. But why would the rock she had come with make her ill?

Grace had keeled over, paling and clutching her stomach. "Grace," said Lana immediately, putting a hand on her shoulder in concern, "what's wrong?"

"I… I think I just figured out that I'm allergic to the meteor rock in your necklace," Grace panted.

Whitney looked down… "Oh, shit," he said suddenly. He took off the necklace, ran with it back to the porch, set it on the porch swing, and came jogging back.

"That's… that's better," Grace breathed, standing upright, the color returning to her face. Mysteriously, the pain had vanished.

"Wow. I didn't know it makes people sick. Maybe no one should be wearing that necklace," said Lana worriedly.

"Maybe," said Grace with a weak smile. "That's why I never…"

"It's why you never talked to me before, because you always felt sick!" Lana realized.

Grace smiled and held up a thumbs up. "Bingo," she admitted.

"Wow, I just thought you didn't like me!" Lana laughed in relief. "This is great! I wish we'd figured it out years ago; I'd have taken the necklace off sooner!"

"So… I take it tonight went well," said Whitney in confusion, smiling as he looked from one to the other.

"She was great. We had a long talk about… parents," Lana admitted, looking down and smiling. Whitney must have known where she was going.

"That's right. Kent's adopted," Whitney realized.

"Yup. And it turns out we both like books, and horseback riding, and - it was really great!" said Lana eagerly, breathless.

"Well… that's good," said Whitney with a little smile. "Hey, Lana, your aunt needs you inside for something."

"Okay. I'll see you at the homecoming dance?" Lana asked brightly, turning to Grace.

"Yeah. I'm going stag with Chloe and Abby. We have a whole color theme down and everything. I'll be there to see you two crowned Homecoming King and Queen," said Grace wryly.

Whitney and Lana smiled at each other. "Well, be sure to come over and say hi. Since we're friends," said Lana playfully, her nose wrinkling again as she smiled. Then she walked up the front porch, past the swing, took up the necklace to put it away, and went back inside the house.

"Hey, Kent." Grace turned warily to Whitney, who surprised her by saying seriously, "Thanks. Look, I know we don't run in the same circles, and your friends think I'm a jackass. And, well… sometimes I am, so they're not wrong.

"But I really do care about Lana. And… she's really sensitive about her parents, and I don't think she feels like she has many true friends. So… thanks. And don't screw this up," said Whitney quietly.

Grace looked up at him. "Understood," she said, her face sympathetic. She had a newfound respect for Whitney Fordman.

Whitney broke the silence and turned to go back inside Lana's house, hands in his pockets.

Grace turned the other way to walk back home. Lana was right. She was lucky to have her parents - and they had told her. Everything they knew. The worst they had done was give her a home when they should have turned her into the experimental science testing center of the government.

So it was time to get over this weird little moment and stop worrying them.

* * *

Lex's new manor was a castle. That was the first thing Grace really registered. This was not, in fact, a manor. It was a castle. So… not intimidating at all for someone who'd grown up on a farm.

It was a huge stone medieval castle with vast, neat English gardens and fountains and greenhouses and little stone benches with ornate angels and gargoyles carved into them. The inside was about the same. She entered a huge wood-paneled entrance hall with intricate stained glass windows letting in light, paintings adorning the walls, and a chandelier.

"Who owns an actual chandelier?" she accidentally whispered to herself out loud as she wandered, staring, down the entrance hall in search for someone - anyone. The whisper echoed loudly in the silence.

"Hello?" she called next, louder but tentative. Still no answer. She stared down the darker corridor ahead uncertainly.

Were people really living here?

She walked up to two huge open doors to her left and found herself in… a Great Hall. Currently empty but for two adults in full fencing gear fencing back and forth inside it. Grace watched in surprise, the intricate, slashing, gleaming back and forth of metal versus metal, martial movement. The female combatant suddenly in a great move got inside the male's guard and pinned him to the wall.

The two relaxed. The match was over.

In a fit of temperamental frustration, the male fencer seized up and threw his sword across the room - at the wall right next to where Grace had been standing unseen. Grace froze up as the sword embedded itself in the paneling right beside her head with the sharp shick of a point.

The male fencer took off his mask, staring. It was Lex.

"... Grace?" he said, surprised. "I didn't see you."

"I, uh… buzzed but no one answered," said Grace nervously.

Lex walked over and grabbed the sword out of the wall. Grace was still a little jumpy from the sudden scare. She knew rationally the sword couldn't hurt her, but that wasn't much comfort when there was a sharp piece of metal aiming right at your face.

"How'd you get through the gate?" Lex added curiously, quite conversational about the whole thing.

"I kinda squeezed through the bars," said Grace, quickly and self consciously. Suddenly she wondered what she was doing here. She'd thought it would be politer to give the gift back in person, but increasingly she was feeling like an intrusion who didn't belong. What, after all, she thought, would Lex Luthor care what of his she gave back?

"Well, you are kind of small. I guess I can see it," he said, amused and not trying to be insulting.

"Yeah…" She smiled back uneasily. "Look, if this is a bad time, I think I'll just - bow out -"

She could leave the car by the gate. She'd driven it here to the edge of town; she could walk back.

"Oh, no, don't worry about it," said Lex quickly. "I think Hykia has sufficiently kicked my ass for the day." He sounded much calmer about it than he'd looked a minute ago. He walked toward Hykia, a tall beautiful blonde woman with long hair taking off her own helmet, and he tossed his own helmet to her.

Then he left the Great Hall with Grace, of all people, small with short dark hair and plain clothes from a farm - and not a particularly successful one at that.

"This is a great place," she said in awe, still looking around at the impossibly tall ceilings, as she walked behind Lex across the entrance hall toward the grand, sweeping mahogany staircase with plush carpets.

"Yeah? If you're dead and in the market for something to haunt," said Lex scathingly, perhaps unknowingly making fun of the biggest and grandest building Grace had ever set foot in - because it wasn't modern enough for him.

"I meant that it's roomy," said Grace stiffly. "Large, grand." She fell silent, her face falling into its stoical mask again.

She was hurt and as usual she'd never admit it. She still felt like she didn't belong here. And between the strange gift and the complete lack of awareness of everything he had, at this point she wasn't particularly fond of Lex Luthor.

"It's the Luthor Ancestral Home, or so my father claims," said Lex. "He had it shipped over from Scotland stone by stone."

"The Luthor ancestors were from Smallville, Kansas?" Grace asked, confused, before she could stop herself.

Lex stopped on the staircase and let out an actual, genuine, surprised laugh. "I'll let you ask my father that question," he said, amused, turning back to Grace.

"I remember," said Grace curiously, "the trucks rolled through town for weeks but no one ever moved in. We weren't… I mean, it's not like we were heartbroken about it, but no one could understand. We were all very confused."

"My father had no intention of living here," said Lex, turning more serious. "He's never even stepped through the front door." He said this like it should be obvious.

"Then why'd he ship it over?" Grace asked, confused.

"Because he could," said Lex, and he continued up the staircase.

… Oh.

Lex led Grace into a second story room with beautiful crystal windows looking out over the grounds. It was filled with modern silver and black, lots of slim workout equipment mostly. Judging from Lex's form, he used most of it, too. Grace looked away uncomfortably as he began taking off his fencing equipment, revealing slim, expensive black clothing underneath.

He was slim, but fit, and she shouldn't be looking at him that way. Too much of an age gap. Amongst other things. Instead, she stared into the warm fire blazing in the ancient stone fireplace.

Lex watched Grace. She was looking away politely, her face revealing little, and had become perfectly still. Lovely as she was, she was almost a carving, a perfectly still statue, her hands crossed simply before herself and her head tilted slightly, gazing emotionlessly into the fireplace. The fire sparkled in her eyes, which were round and glittering and blue. Only they betrayed innocence.

"How's the new ride?" he asked at last, when he realized at some point she had closed off and would not move nor speak until spoken to.

At last, she roved her head around to look at him. No other part of her body shifted. "It's why I'm here," she said expectantly. "It's a lovely gift, Lex, just the right thing, and that's the problem. I can't take that gift, I don't need a reward for saving someone's life, and I certainly can't keep it. I drove it back; it is sitting at the gates. It is yours to do with as you will.

"Thank you very much, and I hope you have a good time here in Smallville."

And just like that, she turned to leave, the door shutting. He felt in a weird way like he'd already been judged when he wasn't expecting it.

"Grace, wait!" She paused, but did not turn back to look at him. "You saved my life," said Lex incredulously. "I think a new car for your driving lessons is the least I can do."

He'd been thinking… small, when he'd bought that gift. "That's… not a small gift for you?"

Grace turned back, and smiled a little. "Lex," she said softly, and she said it with an odd kind of fondness, "I have spent my entire life in Smallville, and no one I have ever met before has ever bought any car new, let alone a Forester with four wheel drive.

"But that's not why I won't take it. As I said, it's a lovely gift. But I wouldn't take any gift. On principle."

He had no idea what that meant, so his first job was to search for motivation. The thought of Grace not accepting the gift, of saying no… it had never occurred to him.

In his world, anyone would have jumped at a sign of friendship from him - even others in his social class.

"Your father doesn't like me, does he?" Lex thought back to the riverbank, reaching ever so slightly. "It's okay if he doesn't. I've been bald since I was nine. I'm used to people judging me before they get to know me."

"He… that is not the problem, Lex." Grace looked like she was struggling to explain. "How do I say this…?

"You are right. My father does not like you. But it has more to do with your family."

"He doesn't trust my father. Assumes the apple doesn't fall far from the tree," Lex guessed flatly. That would figure.

"He… that is almost it." Grace was smiling, but she looked frustrated, like there was something he wasn't quite seeing. "Look. I'm going to tell you some things, and then you're going to make the leap. Okay? Let's put aside the issue of me not needing a reward for saving someone's life - which is true. I don't. But let's put it aside, since you seem to have trouble believing me. I'll put it another way.

"My father and I go fishing together, and when I was growing up, we had this very good friend named Mr Bell. He would let us go fishing on the river at his property, free of charge. We had a neighbor, a fellow farmer and also a good friend, named Mr Guy. He would send us pumpkins from his pumpkin patch every Halloween, also free of charge, just because he liked us and he could.

"You have… you would call them alliances. You have alliances like this in your life, correct?

"Mr Guy and Mr Bell are both now homeless, in a way where we can't help them. You know, of course, about the Luthor Corp real estate project. Two adjoining estates were bought out to build the houses on.

"Your father promised to cut my friends in on a deal. He sent them gifts, like this one. And I'm not saying you would do the same as he did. Let me finish.

"On a practical level, it doesn't matter what you would do if a gift was accepted, you see. Because once Mr Bell and Mr Guy had sold their properties, your father went back on his word and had them evicted. That's why they're homeless. And they aren't some entrepreneurs. They can't just come back from that. And they don't just have big enough friends to bail them out. Their lives, you see, are ruined. Not even we can help them.

"Did your father do anything illegal? No. But that is where the money came from to buy my car.

"It is not about you, Lex. Not really.

"Anyway, we would be very strange friends. You are barking up the wrong tree. You see, your plant dumps toxic waste every single day onto nearby Smallville lands and rivers instead of properly disposing of it.

"I have a big problem with this. I love Smallville, and I want to keep it clean. I believe in free range animals and organic food; my family's farm is all free range, grass fed, and organic. So naturally, I am not going to take money from a company that… My apologies, a company that can afford new cars but not safe disposing practices.

"It doesn't look good, you see.

"That's why I can't take the car. I apologize. I wanted to tell you in person, and I hope I have not overly offended you."

Finished with her speech, she stood there calmly, hands crossed.

"... So," said Lex slowly, walking up to her, "if I gave Mr Bell and Mr Guy both new pieces of land in Smallville and enough startup money to begin again… if I personally kept anything from happening to anyone else in Smallville… and if I started safe disposing practices… you wouldn't be able to refuse that?"

Grace's eyes widened, her first true sign of surprise. "... It would not be my gift to refuse," she said simply, sounding shocked.

Lex smiled. "You sound surprised. What? You made a good argument." He shrugged. "I'll take your advice. Getting a feel for the land is important in any business.

"You really don't think you could do any good for Smallville, as my friend? Come on," he added softly. "I need someone to keep me in line. Keep me from becoming my father."

He was more serious this time.

"I… do not know your father. So you will have to settle for me trying to help you be a good person," said Grace uncertainly, as if genuinely unsure these were acceptable terms of agreement.

"Aim for that and we'll be wanting the same thing," said Lex with an unpleasant, sarcastic smile.

"... Alright," said Grace, and she paused. "But - forgive me - you did not seem to be expecting this turn of events. Why did you want to befriend me, Lex Luthor?"

She was sharp.

"Well - before the part where you showed ethics higher than anyone else I've ever met?" said Lex wryly.

"You do not need to needlessly compliment me," she said sharply.

"It wasn't needless. I'm a little in awe of your morals. You genuinely don't want anything from me, do you?" Lex realized incredulously.

"No. Friends is fine," she said firmly. "We will be friends." She said this like it was already decided.

Lex decided something. He walked over to a nearby shelf and took out an intricately carved lead box. He went back over and handed it to her. "Here. For the girl who doesn't want anything," he said.

Grace took the box curiously. "It is beautiful," she said softly, her eyes widening, expressive. It did have a grim, Gothic sort of flare. Strange to hear a teenage girl call it beautiful. "What is it?"

"It's just a box. Made of lead. My Mom gave it to me before she died." Lex looked down at it fondly. "She got it from Casbah in Morocco. A little guy told her it was made from the armor of St George - patron saint of Boy Scouts. Giving it to me right before she passed… I think she was trying to send me a message."

He took a deep breath and took a risk. This was getting surprisingly difficult.

"I'm giving it to you," he said. "As the new safeguard of my morals and ethics."

Grace looked up with big eyes even as she clutched the box tighter to herself. "I can't take this," she gasped.

"What is it with you and gifts?" said Lex, amused. "Take it. It's not dirty money. It wasn't even expensive. It'll fit anywhere in your house you want to put it.

"But it means something. You challenged me and you challenged me to be something better all in the same conversation, even though it was a risk. You've agreed to be my friend. Just a simple friend. That belongs with you. We are friends. Aren't we?" he said challengingly.

"I will try to be a good friend," she said cautiously, eyeing him searchingly as she slowly tucked the box safely in her long, big-button coat, near her chest. "Your mother… you were fonder of her than you are of your father?"

"My father sees me as a strategy tool," said Lex acerbically. "My mother saw me as her child." He smiled humorlessly.

Grace tilted her head. "Then I am very honored," she said, and she said it so calmly and solemnly that part of him relaxed a little. Her presence was surprisingly soothing. "But… you still haven't told me why you wanted to be friends."

Lex smiled and looked off into the distance. "Grace, do you believe a person can fly?"

Grace frowned, puzzled. "Sure. In a plane."

"No, I'm not talking about that," said Lex dreamily. "I'm talking about soaring through the clouds with nothing but air beneath you…"

"People can't fly, Lex," Grace reminded him softly.

"I did," said Lex quietly. "After the accident, when my heart stopped. It was the most exhilarating two minutes of my life… I flew over Smallville, and for the first time, I didn't see a dead end. I saw a new beginning. Then you brought me back and I saw you." He looked down at her. "And I don't know how, I just - knew I was going to be okay. I still do.

"Thanks to you, I have a second chance."

He smiled slightly, but his eyes were intense. Shyly, blushing, Grace turned to stare down stonily at her toes - still a tiny statue.

"We have a future, Grace." Grace looked up tentatively. "And I hope to win over your father, because I don't want anything to stand in the way of our friendship."

Grace smiled slightly, her eyes challenging. "Then you'll have to win over my mother as well," she said playfully as she walked off down the corridor. "Because she doesn't like you either. Care to take a walk with me?"

They slowly fell into step beside each other, walking down the corridor of the manor past the big windows.

"I value honesty," said Lex, amused. "Good to know I have my work cut out for me up ahead."

Grace smiled slightly, her eyes sharp as she stared straight ahead and walked. "You can always count on honesty from me, Lex," she said, tough, "even when you don't want to hear it. I, too, value honesty - and directness."

"That's new. I don't actually know anything about you, you know. I mean, I know your personality. Your father. Where you live and what you look like. But not -"

"The other things. Yes. I am equally in the dark about you," said Grace. "So - me first."

And she began talking about herself - everything from books and robotics to dancing and old movies. She loved yellow roses. ("Nice yet humble," she said, "they suit me.") She had a mechanical keyboard typewriter. She wrote political opinion pieces for her local school newspaper. She loved 60's music and old vintage dresses. Her best friends were Chloe Sullivan and Abigail Fine. She'd just recently befriended Lana Lang and Whitney Fordman. She had a rich, soft, steady voice and you had to pay attention, listen hard, to hear not only what she was saying but the inflections behind it. They ended up sitting in a sitting room at some point; he sat farther away from her, and she purposefully moved and sat in the chair closest to him.

"I like to actually be close to people when I talk to them," she said simply, looking up intently into his surprised face.

They got caught in the middle of books, and there accidentally Lex revealed a lot of his biggest passions - history being chief among them. He talked for a long time about ancient, treasured old relics and past conquerors, and moved from there into huge, grim, dark old classics and revenge stories.

"So." Her eyes sparkled mischievously as she smiled. "Hates drafty old houses. Everything in black and silver. Is obsessed with revenge and conquering the world. Good to know."

Lex laughed a little again. It occurred to him that Grace did not know he was not open and did not laugh very often.

"It has occurred to me that I look like a total nerd," Lex admitted. "I promise, I'm actually not. I'm big on martial fighting and I take up a different sport every week and -"

"Ah, but that's not what really matters to you. I like what really matters to you. Nerds are okay," said Grace, nodding like this was a decided fact. "Nerds can be good."

"In that case, I also love comic books," said Lex at last, and this time Grace laughed, an enchanting sound he also had a feeling wasn't heard very often. "And philosophy."

"Philosophy is one of my favorites! We should argue. Arguing is fun," she said, in that same sure tone she said everything.

"Alright. Satisfaction is better than happiness because satisfaction lasts and happiness doesn't. Discuss," he said immediately.

Grace immediately spent the next quarter of an hour debating heatedly, with surprising passion, that happiness could certainly last and more than that should be tried for. "You are simply seeing happiness the wrong way," she said intently. "Happiness is not getting a new car. That's a carnal craving being satisfied. Happiness is having a connection with another human being, a loving connection, and nurturing it."

"That's very Buddhist of you," said Lex, surprised and impressed, mostly to watch her respond.

Grace's face lit up with passion when she started talking about one of her ideals. Her true self broke through.

Lex hadn't learned a single thing about what had happened to his car, but that could wait and anyway he found he didn't mind too much.

* * *

Chloe and Abby had joined the crowd around the pharmacy, watching from behind yellow police caution tape as a strapped-down man was loaded into an ambulance stretcher.

"That's the third this week," said Abby worriedly.

"And they're all male, and they're all former jocks," said Chloe softly, absent-mindedly counting down the similar details as she watched the ambulance truck.

Abby tapped Chloe on the shoulder, frowning, and pointed through the crowd.

"Hey, who's he? I thought I knew everyone in Smallville, but he looks our age and I've never even seen him before."

She was pointing at a skinny, pale teenage boy through the crowds; he had a skulking sort of stance and straw-colored hair. He was watching the ambulance emotionlessly.

"I don't know," said Chloe, but she sounded curious. "Let's check him out." Covertly, she raised the photographer's camera from around her neck and took a picture at an angle through all the bodies.

* * *

Chloe, Abby, and Grace met a few hours later in the school library. Cheering crowds could be heard out the library door past them; the big homecoming game and dance would be happening later that night.

But these three had other things on their mind.

"His name's Jeremy Creek," said Chloe. "This is a picture of him twelve years ago." She held up an old high school yearbook photo. "This is one I took four hours ago." Next she showed her computer screen, the photo digitally uploaded onto it.

Both photos were exactly the same. Jeremy Creek still looked like a teenage kid.

"That's impossible," said Grace immediately, frowning. "He'd be about 26 today. Must be a kid who looks like him."

"I was thinking maybe they were related - family connection, you know?" said Abby helpfully. "Until we checked missing persons…" She winced and looked down sorrowfully.

Chloe passed Grace a report. Grace looked it over quickly, still frowning.

"Jeremy disappeared from the state infirmary a few days ago where he'd been in a coma for 12 years. They say he suffered massive electrolyte imbalance."

"That's why he hasn't aged a day," Abby added.

"So you're telling me… he just woke up on his own," said Grace slowly and skeptically. "And.. walked out of the state infirmary."

"Well, no, there was a huge electrical storm, and the hospital's generator went down," said Chloe. "Everything must have been really dark. And when the power came back on, Jeremy was gone."

"The electrical surge must have charged him up like a Duracell," said Abby.

"And now he's back in Smallville, putting former jocks from his time at Smallville High into comas," said Grace thoughtfully. "Why?"

"Because twelve years ago, right before his coma, they made him that year's Scarecrow," said Abby with pity. Both she and Grace made a face.

"That makes weird amounts of sense," said Grace. "He's still caught up in petty, bullied kid high school mentality, only with the added trauma of twelve years in a coma."

"This part, I still don't get," Chloe admitted. "What exactly is the Scarecrow? Whenever I talk about it, Abby looks like I just kicked a puppy."

"It's a freshman boy hazing ritual," said Grace calmly, her face sympathetic. "Every year before the big homecoming game, all the popular senior football players select some poor nerdy freshman guy, take him out to Reilly Field, strip him down to his boxers, paint an S on his chest, and then string him up like a Scarecrow."

"They leave him there for hours," said Abby, "just to make sure he never makes it to his first big homecoming game and dance."

"Now where he was found makes sense," said Chloe, her eyes widening in realization.

"... Where he was found?" said Grace.

"That's right, I haven't told you that part yet. Guess how Jeremy got into his coma?" said Chloe, smirking.

"I'll give you a hint," Abby added. "What anniversary is today? Every year at homecoming in October, what anniversary always happens?"

"... The anniversary of the meteor strike," Grace breathed, going entirely still but her eyes wide. The anniversary of the day she had come to Earth.

Chloe handed over a newspaper clipping. "Comatose boy found in field, twenty yards from meteor strike," Grace read the headline aloud.

"The exposure to the blast must have done something to his body," said Chloe. "Which answers the only question we still haven't figured out: How is some supposed fourteen year old with no resources electrocuting random adults into serious heart and nerve damage? His meteor infected body - it absorbed the electricity from the infirmary electrical storm."

"This can't be right," said Grace softly, staring with horror at the headline.

"I think we should show her," Abby told Chloe.

Grace looked up, confused. "... Show me what?"

* * *

They opened the door and clicked on the light. Smallville Torch Headquarters. Grace still hadn't seen much of it yet, giving her reports directly to Chloe since they were friends.

But now she saw. The lights clicked on - computers, monitors, desks, keyboards, printers - and then came the far wall.

It was covered in a huge collage of article clippings. The one thing they all had in common? Meteor rock. Usually glowing green. The very thing that could hurt Grace if she was around it for too long.

"It started out as a scrapbook and just kind of mutated." Chloe grinned proudly.

"What is it?" Grace asked in horrified wonder.

"I call it the Wall of Weird." Chloe walked in front of the wall and spread her arms out. "It's every strange, bizarre, and unexplained event that's happened in Smallville since the meteor shower."

"... And you have a whole wall full of these," Grace confirmed, just standing there and staring at the massive space behind Chloe.

"Oh, yeah. This isn't even all of them. These are just the events I could directly trace back in some way to meteor rock contact," said Chloe. "The meteor shower is when it all began - when the town went schizo."

Grace walked closer to it. "Why didn't you tell me about this?" she asked in a hard voice, suddenly hard to read.

"Do you tell me everything that happens in your life?" said Chloe, annoyed. "We all keep secrets, Grace. Call me crazy, but I kind of thought you'd call me a nutjob."

"No… I believe you, Chloe," said Grace slowly, still looking over the wall.

"Great! So that's all three of us!" Chloe beamed at Abby.

"The meteor shower, huh?" said Grace in soft sorrow, looking the wall over. Her initial question remained: Why was she sent with something that could make her sick and cause mutations in humans? More than that, why was she sent as a young child - so young she couldn't remember anything, let alone have controlled any of it?

She paused at one article. "Heartbreak in the Heartland." Lana as a little girl in a fairy princess costume was crying on the Time magazine cover.

"... Lana's parents died in the meteor shower," Grace realized. "She was there…

"That's why she didn't answer the question."

"What do you mean?" Grace turned to a confused Chloe and Abby.

"I had a conversation with Lana Lang the other day. It went surprisingly well. I even learned I'm allergic to the meteor rock inside her necklace, not her, because she'd given it to Whitney to wear like a chain."

"Well that blows my theory," said Chloe.

"And Lana promised to put the necklace away and keep anyone from wearing it. Anyway, she's more genuinely nice than I thought she'd be, and she wants to say hi to me at the dance tonight. So… weird things not caused by meteor rock do in fact happen in Smallville."

"That's oddly comforting," Abby admitted.

"But anyway… we mentioned that we were both orphans by birth. Don't ask, it's a long story. I asked her if she remembered her parents. She said they died when she was three. It only occurred to me later that wasn't really an answer," Grace admitted.

Chloe and Abby winced. "Ooh, you should read the article, it was nasty, too," said Chloe. "I can guarantee you she remembers it. Her aunt had been babysitting her that day. She was in her aunt's arms outside the flower shop. Her parents parked across the street and stepped out of the car to come pick her back up. And right there, right in front of her, a meteor rock arced down and the whole thing - them, their car - it all just went up in flames."

"Her necklace is probably to remember them by," said Abby quietly. "She's wearing a fairy princess costume because she hadn't been able to wait for Halloween, so her parents had let her wear it around that day."

"... I can see why she wouldn't want to talk about that part," said Grace quietly. "All that damage…" She looked back at the wall. "It's terrible. I don't know why or how those rocks got here… But if someone sent them here on purpose, that's terrible.

"We should try to help the people infected by this," she decided, "when we can."

She wasn't sure if she'd been sent with the rocks to fight them or not - but either way, it was what she intended to do. She felt an odd sense of responsibility for them.

"Hey, I'm up for it," said Chloe.

"We could be our own little Smallville Defense Team!" Abby grinned.

Grace smiled. "Yeah," she said quietly, looking over the articles, "we could." She glanced back at her friends warmly.

Then she paused.

"... You guys should know… you know those abilities we've been talking about?" she asked at last, more seriously. "You should know upfront…"

"You're one of the meteor infected!" Chloe gasped, her eyes lighting up.

And she looked into their faces, and she chickened out. She couldn't tell them she had come with the shower. She just couldn't.

"Sort of," she said, looking down. "In a way. I… I don't really want to talk about it, if that's okay. Maybe someday I'll tell you why I have my powers. But not now."

"Okay," said Chloe readily. "That's fair. If you tell us what you can do."

"And why you kept it from us." Grace glanced up. Abby looked - genuinely hurt.

"I spent most of my life thinking I was a freak," Grace admitted. "I didn't know what was happening to me. Only recently have I figured it out."

"You're not a freak," said Abby. "Of course I don't think you're a freak!" She hurried forward and hugged her friend fiercely.

Grace hugged her back softly, ducking her head. When Abby stepped back smiling in a warm, motherly way, Grace's eyes were slightly watery.

"... Thanks," said Grace quietly in a surprisingly fragile voice, vulnerable for a moment. Then she moved her head, all emotion was gone, and she straightened. "I have superhuman strength, speed, and a near invulnerable body. You know the car accident with Lex Luthor?"

"The car did hit you," Chloe realized, and she and Abby looked amazed. Then Chloe said quickly. "Okay please don't tell me this is a joke because it is the coolest thing that has ever happened to me."

Grace smiled. She backed up beside the Wall of Weird - then ghosted back up to Abby and Chloe (who jumped) in a burst of near-invisible speed, picked up an entire computer desk in one hand, and then set it calmly back down.

She took a deep, bracing breath, hoping they weren't about to be terrified of her. "See?" she said weakly, spreading her hands. "But I don't exactly want to be dissected in a lab, so…"

"Secrecy is key." Chloe nodded. "Got it."

"This is so cool!" Abby jumped up and down, fists before herself, stars in her eyes.

"So… you guys know part of the reason I told you this, right?" said Grace slowly, looking playfully from one to the other. "If we're going to be a Smallville Defense Team…"

"We're the researchers and the brain. You're the fighter," said Chloe with a wide grin. "You'll be on our side!"

"I've always been on your side," said Grace with a small smile. "And I always will be. That's a promise."

"Which leaves the question," said Abby, looking around at the other two, "what do we do about Jeremy? Go to the police?"

"So we can tell them what?" Chloe argued. "That we think a bunch of alien rock mutated a missing sick person's body and he's going around electrocuting people with his hands?"

"Good point," Abby admitted. "So what do we do?"

They both looked around at Grace.

"... We have to wait for him to reveal himself, flush him out," said Grace. "Chloe, can you think of anyone else he'd be targeting?"

"He's already electrocuted the only three seniors on the football team in his freshman year," said Chloe. "There's a convenient picture of all three together in the Smallville High archives. I checked."

"So theoretically his vendetta is complete," said Grace slowly, "but this kid is mentally deranged. He has the 'everyone hates me' mentality of a high school bully victim. And he never made it to his own homecoming. So if I have him right… his next target will be -"

"Our homecoming," Chloe realized seriously. "Probably the dance. It would be easier to attack an enclosed auditorium full of people…"

"Than it would be a football stadium," Abby finished.

"So we flush him out," said Grace. "We go, we have fun - and we keep an eye out for him. The minute something goes wrong… I mean, he has to do something first, right? Not even he can just electrocute an entire auditorium full of people all at once with no forewarning."

"Then you go out and find him," Abby finished, and she looked worried. "But Grace… what if he attacks you? Are you invulnerable to electricity?"

"I don't know," said Grace, deadly serious. "Let's find out."

"Okay," said Chloe readily, serious. "You leave and we'll cover for you. Say you're sick and had to duck out or something."

"We'll think of something," said Abby. "We can do that, too. We all three work together."

* * *

So they played along with Jeremy's game, waiting for him to reveal himself.

They all got ready back at Grace's house in her upstairs bedroom. They giggled and laughed, put on dresses and makeup and did their hair nicely in front of the bedroom mirror. It was as they'd planned: Chloe in her zippy modern purple dress with her short spiky hair, Grace in her slinky classy blue vintage dress with her chin length bob, Abby in her glasses and her lacy green mermaid gown that for once showed off her curvy body.

They all traipsed down the stairs, smiling playfully, to applauds and cheers from Jonathan and Martha. Countless pictures were taken for all parents, both individual and together, poses were made and grins and laughs were had.

Then suddenly there was a honk outside. Everyone hurried, puzzled, to the door…

A whole line of cars full of popular kids had stopped in the Kent farm front lot. Lana was beaming and waving from the front seat of a truck next to Whitney. "Hey, Kent!" he called. "Get in here and bring your friends with you!"

"Yeah, we got a homecoming to get to!" another boy shouted from another car, and there was raucous laughter.

"I - I was going to drive you -" Jonathan began, stuttering.

"And now you don't need to, because we have a ride," said Grace, beaming and clapping him on the shoulder, and she and her friends hurried, hobbling in their heels, across the front lawn to the trucks.

"Wait - I don't like this -!" Jonathan called with helpless indignation.

"Oh, Jonathan," said Martha, smiling warmly, "just let them go."

"Grace!" Jonathan called. Grace looked around, beaming - and for a moment Jonathan saw a teenage girl, a young adult, not the little girl he'd always seen imprinted over her form. "Be safe," he said.

"Thanks, Dad!" she called brightly, and she climbed cramming herself into the back of Whitney's truck beside Abby and Chloe, Whitney and Lana in the front seats. And the whole cavalcade full of cars moved off in a rumbling and a cloud of dust toward town and homecoming.

"Sorry about the surprise," said Lana eagerly, craning herself back to look at them. "I thought you guys might want a ride!"

"Don't worry, we now get a parade to homecoming," said Abby, stunned. "That's… pretty cool. You have a great dress," she added admiringly to Lana, who was wearing a pinkish ball gown affair.

"Thanks," Lana grinned.

"Yeah, Grace said you'd talked but she wouldn't say much about. I had no idea that conversation comes with privileges," said Chloe, whose eyebrows had risen.

Lana smiled at Grace, who smiled back. "A few," said Lana. "We'll drop you guys off back at the Kent farm, too. It's just on its way to mine, so very convenient. And we part ways at the game, where we have to take all this back off -"

"To play the parts of quarterback and cheerleader," Chloe guessed.

Lana sighed and rolled her eyes, exasperated. "Yeah," she admitted reluctantly. Whitney was laughing. "But!" Lana grinned at Grace, her eyes sparking. "I still expect you guys to say hi to me at the dance."

"You got it," said Grace warmly.

"Oh, this is more than worthy of a hello," said Chloe, looking around herself incredulously. She laughed at the cheering and honking coming from the procession behind her. Grace was for once smiling so hard her face hurt.

So they climbed into the bleachers in their gowns and watched the big game. Grace, an expert at football from years of watching with her father, spent most of the game explaining patiently what was going on to Chloe and Abby. There was cheering from the stands, cheerleaders off to the sides, football players slamming into each other on the field - the whole big charade that came with a high school home game.

The three even found it within themselves to cheer, stand, and clap a few times themselves, grinning.

"I find football to be morally reprehensible, but fun!" Chloe called.

"That means she's enjoying herself!" Abby translated over all the noise, grinning, and Grace started laughing.

And then came the dance, at the local Smallville High auditorium.

It was covered in fairy lights and a shitty live cover band was playing up on the stage. Abby, Chloe, and Grace did come over, grin, and say hi to Lana, Whitney, and the popular people. They got a few stares and whispers as the popular kids greeted them back and talked about meeting up later so they could all drive home together.

"I think our social status at school just changed," Chloe whispered as they walked through the stares back to their place on the dance floor.

"Well, as we've just finished establishing, weirder things have happened," said Grace, shrugging.

"True," Abby admitted ruefully.

And despite their tension, they allowed themselves to have fun. They laughed and danced around playfully to the terrible music, pretended someone hadn't spiked the punch, and had fun under the sparkling fairy lights.

Just when an announcer came up onstage and said, "We will now announce the Homecoming King and Queen -!"

The sprinklers overhead went off.

Everybody began squealing, shouting, and laughing, but Grace had paled. "Water conducts electricity," she breathed. "This isn't a prank."

"Looks like Jeremy Creek has a flair for the dramatic," said Chloe, wincing, as they all got soaked.

"Go. We're your professional excusers. We'll cover for you," said Abby immediately.

Grace sprinted out the side door of the auditorium.

"Poor thing!" said Abby loudly to Chloe so people could overhear. "She comes feeling sick and then the sprinklers go off!"

"Yeah, it sucks," said Chloe sympathetically back to Abby.

"Kent's not feeling well?" a boy nearby asked, kind of amused but also a little concerned, and the rumor had begun its spreading process.

* * *

Grace tackled Jeremy to the ground just as he had reached his hands out to electrocute a wall of the auditorium. She slammed him to the ground, shoved him away, and they both rolled away. Grace immediately stood defensively in front of the auditorium, her stance wary.

Jeremy stood to his feet. "One of those girls back in high school who would never have given me the time of day?" he asked incredulously. "She's going to keep me from attacking the school?" The power box was open beside them, the sprinklers switched on.

"Looks that way," said Grace. Carefully, she reached over, flipped the switch, and turned the sprinklers off.

She didn't need anybody else coming out here right now.

"Jeremy, you need to stop this," said Grace. She was going to try talking him out of this. It might not work, but it was a stalling tactic and it was worth a shot.

"Look, I don't know who you are," said Jeremy, "but you should leave while you can. Go! Run!" He waved his hand, his eyes wild. "Your friends in there are as good as gone!"

"I won't let your hurt those people in there, and not just because they're my friends," said Grace heatedly. "Jeremy, those people in there never did anything to you! This has gone too far!"

"... You know," Jeremy realized, standing very still in surprise. Then his face twisted. "I'm not doing this for me!" he snarled. "I'm doing it for that kid strung out in that field tonight! I'm doing it for all others like us! Those people I saw you talking to in there - they did what happened to me to another kid earlier tonight! You realize that, don't you?

"They don't deserve to live."

"That's a big jump, Jeremy," said Grace warningly. "They pranked a kid and they don't deserve to live?

"Jeremy… I understand that you're in pain, that you're hurting. But -"

"You don't understand anything what I've been through! You in there with your perfect dancing and your vintage dress and your group of friends and your talk with the popular kids? You're beautiful, people love you! What the hell do you understand?

"And I'm not in pain," Jeremy snapped. "I have a gift, and a purpose, and a destiny!"

Jeremy made to run forward, but in a flash of super-speed Grace was suddenly in front of him. "So do I," she said in a hard voice, anger flashing across her face.

The talking part was done.

Jeremy reached out, electricity in his hands, and tried to electrocute Grace - and it didn't work. Not even her soaking wet dress burned; it was like some weird, invisible force field had been set around her and it pushed his hand back away.

Grace picked Jeremy up full-body in two hands and threw him several feet right into the front of a nearby car. The auto shop building was right across from the auditorium.

Jeremy got back up with effort, glaring angrily.

"Give it up, Jeremy!" Grace called, still calm.

Jeremy got into the car, jumped it with electricity - it revved to life and he charged it forward, attempting to run Grace over. The truck hit Grace, who lifted her feet and moved with the car, clutching the front of it. She was rammed without getting hurt through a brick wall that had an emergency hydrant attached to it.

The car burst through the wall, busting the pipe.

Water leaked into the car in a gush just as Jeremy tried to jump the car again - Grace stepped back slowly, staring, as Jeremy was fried by his own electricity. He seized and seized, then was still.

Grace yanked the car through and pulled off its door full-force, tossing the door away. The electricity had faded away. Slowly, Jeremy's eyes blinked open. He looked… oddly placid, calm, as he stared up at a dripping wet and cautious Grace Kent.

"... Are you okay?" Grace asked uncertainly at last.

"Who are you? Where am I?" said Jeremy in a tiny voice - the voice of a regular teenager, with no powers and no memory of what he had done with them.

Grace smiled warmly. "I'm Grace Kent," she said. "You're in Smallville."

* * *

Homecoming ended up being good in more ordinary ways as well as big ones. Back at the auditorium, after the police had pulled away (on reports of a prank supposedly), a dripping and ruined Lana Lang and Whitney Fordman had been crowned Homecoming King and Queen in a joke ceremony full of gales of laughter and loud cheers. Everyone soaking wet and laughing, Grace and her two friends were dropped off in front of her house by the cavalcade of cars. They waved from the front of the house as the cars pulled away.

"Well, that was memorable," said Chloe with feel, and Abby laughed. "You think we should hold it against them?" Chloe added. "The Scarecrow tradition?"

Grace was thoughtful. "I think the only person who's ever gotten hurt is Jeremy," she said at last. "I think we don't have to be best friends with the football players and the cheerleaders to say hi as we pass them in the hallways. And…" She smiled and turned to her two friends. "I think that if we hated everyone who did something jackass stupid in high school, we wouldn't end up liking anyone - including ourselves."

"Here's to that," said Chloe. "Now let's go inside and get warm and dry."

"We might want to tell your parents what's been going on," Abby added warmly, amused.

"True," Grace sighed. "They deserve to know. Watch me get grounded for a million years," she muttered to herself as they walked back inside the house.

Her friends laughed. "I think you'll survive," said Abby.

The moonlight shone down quietly that night on the Kent farm. Jeremy Creek was now in custody, Grace's secret was safe, and in that moment all was well.


	2. Web

Chapter Two/Episode Two: Web

The football players finally came to get Greg Arkin off his Scarecrow pedestal around midnight. After, he assumed dully, the homecoming game, the homecoming dance, and the long procession of driving everybody home.

Moonlight lit the cornfield as the snickering football players came and untied Greg, Whitney Fordman in the lead. Chest painted, in only his boxers, Greg slumped to the ground and glared up in helpless resentment. He felt skinny, pale, nerdy, and pathetic, with his glasses, his greasy hair, his acne.

"Stay away from my girlfriend, Arkin," said Whitney Fordman warningly as all the football players backed up to make their way back to the truck. "I've noticed you sneaking around, following Lana when she thinks you aren't there, and I want you to lay off. That's called stalking, you know, and it's fucking creepy."

Then the football players ran off. Greg heard the vroom of their truck as they trundled away down the road outside the field. Of course, they hadn't offered him a ride back into town. He would have to walk home. Smallville High called it the Walk of Shame.

At least they'd left him his clothes.

Greg gathered up his clothes in the dirt, put them back on, and ran through the cornfields back toward town and his house in the pitch blackness of the nighttime countryside. He hoped and prayed his Mom wouldn't still be awake.

* * *

Back at his house, Greg closed the front door as softly as he could. He peeked around a corner into the living room - and felt not only dread fill his heart, but horror.

One of his videos of Lana - one of the videos where she hadn't known he was hiding there taping her for his own private bedroom viewing later - was playing on his living room television. His Mom was sitting there on the sofa, watching, TV screen glowing softly in the darkness, a silent kind of fury in her face.

She saw him, whirled around, and stood. The video tapes were in her hands. All of them.

"Is this what you do with your time now, Greg?" she snapped.

"Where did you get those?" Greg demanded.

"Where do you think? In that hole you call a room!"

"You had no right to go in there!" Greg was near tears and it was infuriating, humiliating.

"Oh, you've got a lot of nerve talking to me about privacy," Greg's mother hissed, her eyes slits in her livid face. "I am in the garden club with Lana's aunt. How am I going to face Nell knowing my own son is creeping around videotaping her niece?"

Of course. She was concerned about the garden club, and herself.

"Is that where you were tonight?" Greg's Mom demanded.

Well he sure as hell wasn't going to tell her where he'd really been. Greg wasn't a rat, people at school thought he was enough of a freak as it was - and anyway, to put it lightly, it wasn't that kind of mother-son relationship.

"I was out collecting," he said instead.

"Two disgusting habits!"

"Insects aren't disgusting, Mom," he muttered in passive aggressive anger. Again tonight, he felt pathetic, helpless, weak.

"Look what has become of you, Greg," said his Mom desperately. "This isn't you."

Greg stiffened. "People change," he said quietly.

"Oh, really?" The motherly instincts left and the seemingly constant, persistent anger returned. "Monday morning, I am phoning Claremont Military Academy." She harrumphed and brushed past him.

"Yeah, right, Mom," said Greg scathingly. She was always threatening that; she'd never actually done it.

But this seemed to be the last straw. Greg's mother whirled around, her eyes flashing.

"No, Greg. I've had it with your behavior. This time I'm making the call." A kind of hardness had entered her voice. That was Mom's answer to everything - discipline the problem away. She stalked off.

"Hey! Who's going to take care of my bugs?!" he called in horror after her, realizing she was serious. Dad would have prevented this, but Dad wasn't here. And Mom sure as hell wouldn't be taking care of his bugs.

A silence from Mom's end of the house. There was no answer.

Greg had to do something. He couldn't just let them all die. So he hurried upstairs to his room, whispered to the countless insect tanks covering his room, "Don't worry, guys. I'm going to take you somewhere safe," and he began sneaking them one by one out into his car through the upper story window. Each tank glowed green, producing an eerie tone to his darkened bedroom. He had covered the tanks in green meteor rock for his bugs to climb all over.

Once he had his car filled with bug tanks, he drove as fast as he could outside of Smallville town limits in the moonlight. He took a sudden, sharp turn and one of the tanks broke, letting a huge cloud of glowing green, fluttering and flying bugs loose inside Greg's car. He started slapping at them as they swarmed all over him. Greg began to scream.

He crashed into a telephone pole, and his scream echoed but outside of city limits there was no one around to hear him.

* * *

Back in Greg's room later, his mother knocked on the door, perhaps in a peace offering.

"Greg? Where have you been?" Mrs Arkin called, concerned. There was no answer. She opened the door… all the bug tanks were gone, and so was Greg. He must have gone out to free them all.

Frowning, Mrs Arkin shut the bedroom door again and left.

She had not seen Greg attached to the ceiling by his hands and feet, looking directly and silently down at her with big, glowing eyes from above. As a slice of light appeared and then disappeared again when she opened and closed the door, Greg's skin was briefly illuminated.

It was covered in bug bites.

* * *

The morning after homecoming was farmer's market day. The Kents had set up their organic produce stall in one of the long rows on the big dirt lot in the sunshine. Chloe and Abby were there that day, helping Grace, Jonathan, and Martha.

Lana and Whitney came over to their stall, smiling, holding hands and busy shopping.

"So," said Chloe playfully, "was the tiara still cool soaking wet?"

Lana laughed. "Even better. That was some crazy night last night."

"You have no idea," said Grace, smiling as her parents gave her a wry, disapproving look.

"Thanks, Kent," said Whitney warmly. Grace froze. "You know, for turning off the sprinklers when you had to duck out."

"Oh… you're welcome." Grace wasn't the only one at the stall who relaxed.

"It sucks that you were feeling sick. I'm sorry," said Lana, concerned.

"Grace picks the weirdest times to be sick. She's feeling better today, though," said Abby helpfully.

"It's not like I choose when to be sick," said Grace, glaring half-heartedly, giving more life and credence to the story.

Their friends and family smiled on fondly, amused, though perhaps for different reasons.

"I'm going to get the rest of the boxes out of the trunk," said Grace, smiling with quiet cheerfulness, and she broke off from the group alone to jog out to the parking lot and the bed of the Kent family truck. More boxes of produce were piled inside.

"I heard homecoming was exciting last night."

Grace turned around at the wry comment and smiled. Lex was standing there.

"Lowering yourself to visiting a farmer's market," she said playfully. "That's benevolent of you."

It was obvious she wasn't serious, so Lex smirked back. "Benevolent is not one of the things I'm usually called, but I'll take it," he returned. Grace chuckled.

"Yeah," she admitted, smiling fondly. "An escapee from a hospital called Jeremy Creek somehow found his way back to Smallville and pranked our homecoming by turning the sprinklers on in the middle of Homecoming King and Queen announcements. What are the odds? We all got soaked. The ride back home in everybody's cars was fun, though."

"Yeah, I think I saw him - Creek?" said Lex.

"What?" Grace straightened immediately, concerned.

"Yeah, on my drive back from the plant last night," said Lex thoughtfully. "He sprinted across the road in front of my car. By the time I was out of my car he was already long gone. I had no idea who he was, let alone that he'd gone missing."

"Well, he was probably unstable. You're lucky you didn't get hurt," said Grace, frowning.

"Oh, I'm pretty tough. You sound very concerned, though," said Lex, amused.

"Oh, come on. If something happened to you, who would I have left to trade sarcastic comments and argue with?" said Grace with a sly smile.

"Nice to know I'm so high on your friends list."

"What, are you kidding? I do that with all my closest friends," said Grace cheerfully, quietly amused. Lex smiled, seemingly despite himself.

"So," he said expectantly, "were you crowned Homecoming Queen?"

"Ugh, no, thank God," said Grace, wrinkling her nose playfully as she smiled.

"You're not one of those cool people who pretends not to give a shit what people think of them, are you?" said Lex, skeptically.

"No," said Grace. "See those people over there?" She pointed at the stall. "That's Chloe and Abby - my two alternative best friends. And that's Homecoming King and Queen, Lana and Whitney - also my friends. And that's my Mom. I just think there's more to life than popularity." She shrugged and leaned back against the truck. "Most Popular sounds like a cop-out. I want to be known for something more interesting in my senior yearbook than that."

"You did seem more interesting than the Homecoming Queen obsessed with the blond senior quarterback. Nice to know my instincts weren't wrong," Lex admitted fondly.

"See? As I suspected. You wouldn't have been satisfied with being crowned Homecoming King either," said Grace in smug satisfaction.

"No, that wasn't my thing. Class president, that was my thing," said Lex, his eyes distant as he relived the past. "Someone who could enact real social change."

"Class president, huh?" said Grace thoughtfully.

Lex smirked. "Obsessed with power, remember?"

"Ah, right, right. Well, then you're in the right position," said Grace. Lex looked puzzled. "In case you hadn't noticed, your plant has the potential to enact some pretty fabulous change over the economy and the finances of the people in this town. That's a big deal. You have the potential to do real good here." Grace shrugged and went back to the boxes.

"Nice to know my gift went to the right person," said Lex dryly. "You know…" he added thoughtfully as he looked over the cheerful, warm little farmer's market shaded by trees, the people smiling and saying hi to each other in passing. "Smallville is growing on me."

"You didn't want to be sent here?"

"No. Sadly, I was your stereotypical rich Metropolis City prick with a bad history," Lex admitted. "I like the turn my life has taken here. I think it's for the better."

He reached out to grab an apple on the way by and Grace swatted his hand out of the way irritably.

"No!"

"Hey, I wanted one!" he said, mostly play indignant.

"Then pay for one like everyone else! We value charities very much, but we aren't one!" She was smiling even as she scolded. Lex let out a light laugh. He laughed and smiled a lot more, he was learning, when Grace was around.

Then Lex straightened seriously. Jonathan Kent had finally seen and was coming storming over.

"Grace," Jonathan said, without looking away from his glare at Lex, "your Mom is waiting for those crates."

"... Okay," said Grace slowly and softly, looking between Lex and her father, her face falling back into careful neutrality as its sunniness faded. She headed with her crates of produce back to the farmer's market stall.

"Why are you hanging around my daughter?" Jonathan demanded aggressively as soon as Grace was out of earshot.

"We happen to have decided to be friends," said Lex carefully, giving nothing away. "Is it so weird that someone would just enjoy spending time in her company?"

"Friends," said Jonathan skeptically. "Just friends."

"I don't like what you're implying, Mr Kent," said Lex in a dangerous voice, his eyes narrowed.

"And I don't like how this looks. You send a teenage girl a personalized gift and now you're seen hanging around with her?" Jonathan demanded.

"... I can see the impression you might have gotten," said Lex at last. "I honestly intend to be simply a good friend.

"Look, Mr Kent. I know as well as you do what kind of background I come from. I've asked your daughter if she will help me become a good person - more of a human being and less of a Luthor. That's why we've decided to be friends."

Jonathan paused.

"That sounds like just the sort of thing my daughter would agree to," he said at last. "She has a saving people thing." He turned around back to the stall, and it seemed like a silent surrender.

But he had one last parting comment that would leave Lex thinking a lot.

"Just remember, that's a lot of pressure to put on a fifteen year old high school teenager from a small town. No matter how invulnerable she seems. Don't treat her like she's on your level, Lex, because she isn't."

And with that he walked back to his stall.

* * *

"Lana?"

Everyone back at the stall looked around. Greg Arkin was standing there - but everyone did a double-take, because at first they didn't recognize him. Greg was standing, smooth and confident, smiling with almost eerie poise. His skin was totally clear, his glasses were gone, and his hair was smooth and shiny.

He was - weirdly - attractive?

"Greg. Hey." Lana recovered and smiled, a little incredulous but trying to be friendly. "I didn't recognize you without your glasses."

"What do you want, Arkin?" said Whitney in an unusually hard, unfriendly voice. The rest of the group gave him a surprised glance.

"Whitney," Lana scolded softly, trying not to be overheard, "be nice."

"I was just wondering if Lana would help me with my Lit paper," said Greg defensively, a trace of his old self for a split second in his own voice.

"Nathaniel West assignment giving you brain freeze?" Lana smiled sympathetically.

"Yeah, it's kicking my ass," Greg admitted ruefully.

"Lana, I'm not sure if that's such a -" Whitney began in a mutter, but Lana began smiling determinedly and talking loudly over him.

"Sure, okay!" She beamed.

"Great. How about my house after school?"

And here he was so intent that even Lana paused. There was an uncomfortable silence in which only Mr and Mrs Kent were confused. Everyone at school knew Greg Arkin had an unrequited crush on Lana Lang, though only Whitney had seen its possible depths.

"Library might be easier," said Lana finally in a more cautious tone.

"Great." Greg smiled. "Sorry I couldn't make it to the dance, you guys," he called to everyone else. "See - there was this thing with Whitney and I got a little tied up." He smiled at Whitney Fordman.

"Whitney was with me all night for homecoming." Lana frowned.

"Oh, not all night." Greg smiled icily as Whitney's stance began to get defensive. "Perfect Whitney in his letterman's jacket with the meteor rock necklace gift he never wears? He made a slight detour before meeting you for homecoming."

"Alright, Arkin, we're leaving," Whitney barked, and his arm around Lana's shoulders, he hurried her away. Lana looked confused as they left.

"Lana," Grace whispered after her, and Lana looked in confusion back over her shoulder. Grace winced. "Remember the Scarecrow tradition?" she murmured.

Lana's eyes widened as she was hurried away by her boyfriend. She seemed to have assumed Whitney would never be cruel enough to do something like that.

Grace looked cautiously the other way after Greg, concerned and feeling weirdly caught in the middle of something that didn't concern her. But Greg was gone, too. She stared, feeling cold, at the spot where he had been.

Why Lana was so oblivious to Whitney Fordman, Grace had no idea. He'd admitted to Grace that her friends were right in thinking he was an asshole. Somehow, she didn't think Whitney had ever tried to hide anything about himself.

She wondered if she would be so oblivious, when she fell in love.

* * *

Greg sped with mind-blurring speed up a tree off to the side of the road, watching intently as Whitney drove home from the farmer's market in his truck alone. Greg had watched - watched as Whitney said goodbye to Lana in the parking lot, as they hugged and kissed, as he got into his truck and drove away down the tree-lined dirt roads.

Greg leaped from the tree to the top of the truck and pounded a dent into the roof, all the fury of the past couple of days spilling out of him. He smashed the driver's side window and then pushed at the truck with his legs as he sprang away, tipping the truck over and knocking Whitney unconscious.

Greg landed smoothly on his feet and - Shit. Another car was coming.

In a second, Greg was gone.

Jonathan, Martha, and Grace were driving their own way home from the farmer's market. They jerked to a halt as they saw the ruins of Whitney's truck up ahead on the empty road.

"Oh my God, Jonathan!" Martha yelled, horrified.

Grace was already out and sprinting to Whitney's truck at super-speeds; it had started on fire. Jonathan was just grabbing a fire extinguisher as Grace was pulling Whitney fully out of his truck.

Jonathan saw it about to happen just before it did. "GRACE -!"

The truck exploded.

Grace shoved Whitney to the ground and threw her body on top of his just as the flames engulfed them. At last, the flames receded, and Jonathan and Martha sprinted forward.

"Grace -! Grace -!"

Through the smoke, they could see a near-invisible forcefield faze out. It had been emanating from around Grace's body, and it had covered both she and Whitney in its protective glow. Grace looked up, surprised. Both she and Whitney were fine.

But Jonathan went out to touch Grace's back, and he yanked his hand away, hissing. Grace's body had somehow absorbed the heat of the flames around her. She felt fine, but until she'd cooled down nobody would be able to touch her.

* * *

Jonathan walked out onto the Kents' back porch later that day. Grace and Martha were already standing there, concerned.

"How is Whitney?" Martha asked immediately, frowning in worry.

"I just got off the phone with the hospital. Whitney's going to be alright. He's got a couple of cuts and bruises but nothing serious." Jonathan shrugged, then looked sideways at Grace.

"And does he… remember anything?" Grace asked softly, hesitant.

"No. Just that something smashed his truck and he woke up in the ambulance," said Jonathan, smiling tenderly at his daughter, and Martha and Grace both relaxed. "But he's been told - that you pulled him out in time and saved his life."

"Grace, we're really proud of you," said Martha fervently.

"... You're not freaked out?" Grace asked, flicking her eyes carefully upward.

"No!" Martha put an arm around her. "First you save a whole auditorium full of people and a man from drowning in a river, now this? Honey, this is exactly what I was talking about. This is doing something with your gifts."

"I agree," said Jonathan, smiling warmly. "What you're doing is nothing short of incredible, and we're both really proud of you. No matter how scared shitless the idea of this little team makes us," he added, amused.

He and Martha shared a wry glance.

"Mostly pride," Jonathan confirmed.

Grace smiled at last, a big, warm smile that made her look truly like a human teenage girl. "Thanks," she said eagerly. Then, leaning back against the porch railing and letting out a huge breath, "An explosion. I survived an explosion and no one near me in the explosion has a scratch on them."

She sounded stunned.

"Do you remember anything?" Martha asked curiously.

"Well… I remember lots of gleaming, moving orange, red, and yellow… but all I felt was warmth. Like a breeze on a hot day."

"You felt… a warm breeze… in the middle of an explosion," Jonathan confirmed slowly, staring.

"... Yeah?" Grace looked up, wincing. "I don't know what's happening to me."

"Neither do we," Martha admitted wryly.

"Look, Grace, I'm your father. I'm supposed to have all the answers," admitted Jonathan. "And it kills me that I don't, but you've got to have faith that we'll figure this thing out together."

"I know," said Grace quietly, looking down. "I do have faith. I'll figure it out.

"Somehow."

"Well, you have us," said Martha, her arm still around her daughter's shoulders. Grace leaned her head into her mother's arm and for a moment, tired, she let herself relax.

* * *

Lana had just ridden one of her horses around the paddock and back into the stable the next afternoon. She got off her horse - and a voice came from behind her.

"Lana."

Lana jumped and whirled around - put a hand over her heart and smiled. Greg was standing there.

"Sorry. I scared you," he observed.

"Do you have a habit of sneaking up on people?" She smiled.

"Recently." He shrugged apologetically.

"Just make sure you don't get kicked," said Lana.

"Ah, I could take him," said Greg casually, smiling.

"A horse?" Lana laughed and barely noticed that Greg didn't. "Look, Greg… what you were saying at the farmer's market the other day…"

Lana frowned.

"Did Whitney really do the Scarecrow tradition? Did he string you up in Reilly Field the night of homecoming?"

"Yeah… I don't even know why…" Greg looked down quietly, seeming hurt. "He's just - always hated me for no reason. I guess I'm not popular enough for him. But - yeah, he strung me up. I was sweating and in pain for a lot of hours alone out there. I was kind of afraid he wouldn't come back.

"He did… I guess after dropping you off back at home."

Lana came over, concerned, and put a hand on his shoulder. "Greg, I'm so sorry that happened. I had no idea." Determination formed grim over her face. "I guess I need to have a serious talk with the boyfriend I just visited after he's out of the hospital."

* * *

Mrs Arkin came home with some groceries and the thermostat inside the front door said 103 degrees fahrenheit.

"Greg?! What's going on here?!" she immediately shrieked, putting down her groceries and storming up the stairs. She had barely seen Greg the past few days, and now he pulled this stunt? "Greg, I have had -!"

But she had stormed into his bedroom - and stopped short. It was covered in real, human-sized spider webs, like some travesty of Halloween.

She whirled around and Greg had somehow come to stand silently right behind her. He was wearing his new appearance, eerily calm, and totally naked.

"What the hell has gotten into you?!" Mrs Arkin was so horrified and scared that she actually swore, a rare occurrence.

"About two million years of intelligence and instinct." There was a sickly sweet tone to Greg's voice; he gave a calm, beatific smile.

"You stop this," said Mrs Arkin, but in a hushed, quiet voice not at all like her usual one. "You stop this right now."

"I can't. See, it's too late," said Greg, tilting his head almost sheepishly. "Nature's already taken its course." His eyes gleamed at her, his words soft. "First I'll eat. Then I'll molt. Then I'll mate."

"... You need help." There were tears in Mrs Arkin's eyes as she stared at what had once been her son. She tried to rush out the door and his arm, more muscular, suddenly slammed into the doorway and got in her way.

"Hey, Mom?" Greg smiled slowly. "Did I ever tell you about the Pharaoh Spider? It's a fascinating creature. See, after it hatches…" He smirked. "It kills its mother."

He opened his mouth impossibly huge, jaw coming unhinged, and vast spiderwebs flew out of his throat at a screaming Mrs Arkin. A bug expert would have known, though Mrs Arkin did not - once caught in a spiderweb, a fly was eaten by being sucked dry.

All of its blood and guts were sucked out, so that only an empty shell was left caught in the web.

* * *

Grace was waiting patiently in Lex's study at his manor, looking over his vast computer desk and the stained glass windows behind it. It smelled like his cologne. Sure enough, everything was sleek and modern, silver and black. He had a pool table off to one side, and a little tray set with several crystal tumblers and a bottle of Scotch off to the other.

She had moved to look curiously at the books on his shelves, all first edition surely, by the time he came in behind her.

"Save any lives on your way over?" Grace looked around and smiled. Lex grinned. "Keep it up and you could make a career out of it," he said, but she could see genuine admiration in his eyes.

"I was just dropping off your produce - I thought that if I'm the one who always drops off your produce, it might give us some time to hang out. Sorry my Dad gave you a hard time," she added apologetically. "And thanks for buying from our farm."

"It's supposed to be the best in the county anyway. Don't worry about your parents. If push came to shove, I could have arm wrestled them for it," said Lex.

"So, I have a question. Are you always the first to enter a conversation with a surprise sarcastic comment?" Grace asked teasingly.

"Of course. It keeps people off guard and gives me the upper hand." Lex smirked.

"Of course," she parroted him wryly. "Typical Lex Luthor."

"So, I have a question," he mimicked her jokingly. "Do you always ignore it when people point out that you literally just saved someone's life?"

Grace smiled and looked at the floor. "It was no big deal," she muttered.

"You saved him from an exploding car -" Lex began incredulously.

"It was no big deal!" She looked up at him severely. "I just pulled him out of the truck and then it happened to explode."

Lex stared at her, his lips twitching as if to hold back a smile or laughter.

Grace sighed and sagged. "Okay, so I guess it's kind of a big deal when I say it out loud," she said, exasperated, and Lex started laughing. "Your favorite?" she asked him next, pointing at the Scotch. "Strong stuff."

"But the best," said Lex, sobering. He walked over - looked sideways at Grace. "Don't let this get around, but it's like the way I always start conversations. I take a drink or I start shooting pool whenever I'm in a business meeting and I start feeling… unusually tense. It's a casual way of calming my nerves."

"My lips are sealed," said Grace curiously. "So many layers of defense mechanisms."

"You sound concerned," said Lex wryly, looking away.

"Well, I am - a little," she admitted.

"My world… is not like yours," Lex admitted. "To be honest… it's not even like the world of rich city people who get their money legitimately.

"That's why I need your help. Look… I've been thinking… if the idea of counseling me through all this is too much for you… I don't want to pressure you with any stories you can't handle. I don't want to lose you.

"I also don't want anything to happen to you," he admitted softly.

Grace smiled. "Don't worry, Lex," she said. "I'm pretty tough. You won't lose me. I'm the one person you don't have to worry about.

"And I want to help."

"Yeah, your Dad said… you have a saving people thing," Lex admitted.

"My Dad! You got this from my Dad!" Grace realized, something inside her exploding outward in relief. She laughed. "Well, he's not wrong, but Lex… my father has been trying to overprotect me all my life. Half the things I do that make him proud also terrify him. That's how it is, with fathers and daughters - at the very least, that's how it is with fathers who don't have the money and power to be the safety net for their daughters," she added softly.

"Powerlessness," Lex contemplated softly, considering it. "Well he doesn't have to worry." Determination formed over Lex's expression. "You, your family, and your friends are now officially off-limits," he said in an icy voice.

Grace smiled. "I feel much safer," she said, but she said it a little uneasily, a joke to push past the moment.

Lex looked at her intently. "You should," he said, doing absolutely nothing to waylay her unease. For a moment… Grace could see how Lex Luthor would be frightening as an adversary.

* * *

Lana was waiting for Whitney at his locker the next day at school - ready to pounce.

"Where were you before the game on Saturday?" she demanded, slamming his locker door in front of his face, for once not exactly using her perfect, tinkling Lana Lang voice.

Whitney sighed and closed his eyes. There was still a bandage on his face from where he got cut crashing his truck. "Can we talk about this later?" He had just gotten out of the hospital and wasn't sure how to explain to his girlfriend that Greg Arkin had kind of been stalking her and Whitney had kind of reacted to it in a really dumb, scared, angry way.

"It's a simple question, Whitney," Lana spat out, her eyes narrowing.

"I was warming up." Whitney chickened out.

"So you didn't grab Greg and hang him up in a field?"

"Lana… it was just a prank," Whitney began.

"I want my necklace back," said Lana, her eyes flashing, and she whirled around and stalked away. "Come on, Greg. Let's go. We have a library appointment," she said primly in a frigid tone.

Greg smirked at an infuriated Whitney as he walked off behind a stalking Lana, her hair swishing.

* * *

Grace climbed the steps toward her loft up above the barn after school that day… and paused in surprise.

She had just finished with her daily chores, and Whitney was standing there in the loft, shuffling around awkwardly.

She smiled a little, and finished the climb up the steps. "You could not look any less comfortable if you tried really hard," she said in a soft, warm voice, amused.

Whitney ducked his head and laughed.

"Yeah, uh. Sorry. Your Mom said I could wait up here. Hope you don't mind. This place is pretty incredible," he admitted, looking around. The loft was its own private space, with old furniture, quilts, and the telescope out by the big loft window, which filtered so much sunlight into the wide, open space.

"My Dad built it. He calls it my Fortress of Solitude," said Grace, smiling, and Whitney smiled back. "I was a weird little kid," she admitted. "Quiet, brainy, not easy to read, needed a lot of time to myself. So he built this place for me when I just wanted to be by myself. Chill in the quiet, relax, do my own thing."

"Somehow, I can see that," Whitney admitted. "I didn't know you were into astronomy."

He pointed at the telescope.

"I love stargazing. Out in fields on cool nights with a heated thermos of hot cocoa, it's pretty perfect. But I love telescopes, too, because you get to see everything up close," said Grace.

"Out in a field full of bugs on a cold night. You're the first girl I've ever gotten to know who'd be into that," Whitney admitted.

Grace's eyes flashed mischievously. "Oh, are you kidding? Barefoot, all by yourself, big sky against the elements? It's the greatest!"

Whitney smiled, looked away and nodded. "Lana's not too happy with me right now," he admitted.

"The Scarecrow thing?"

"You told her?" He looked up suddenly, frowning warily.

"No. I just guessed. The night of homecoming, actually," Grace admitted seriously.

"And… you don't hate me?" he asked tentatively.

"I think it was a shitty thing to do, picking on Greg because he had a thing for Lana even though he'd never actually be a threat to you. But I try to discern between shitty thing to do and shitty person," Grace said simply.

"Put it that way… it sounds petty and dumb." Whitney looked down.

Grace nodded. "You should talk to Lana about it. At least let her know you're a human and not just a dick."

"Are you always this good at counseling people?" Whitney asked, smiling wryly.

"I'm the counselor friend," Grace confirmed, smiling. "It is both a burden and a blessing. What, you didn't think I got to be Lana's friend just because we're both orphans who like books and horses, did you?" she asked playfully.

"... I saw your last dance recital. You guys were good," said Whitney.

"I saw your last home game. Believe it or not, I actually understand football - got it from my father. And I know enough to know when a player I see is good, too," said Grace. "Asshole or not," she added, with a smile to show she was mostly kidding.

* * *

Greg stood in the shower underneath the water. He started to scrub at his neck, his face working, and a chunk of skin suddenly fell off his neck and onto the floor, near the drain of the tub.

He continued to peel off skin from his face, neck, and chest.

Eat. Molt. Mate.

* * *

Lana heard a knock on her front door. She opened it up… and there was a box sitting on her doorstep. She opened it up - and gasped in delight as colorful butterflies flew out of it, fluttering around her head.

She looked around, smiling, but no one around seemed to have brought this mysterious gift box.

She walked back inside her house with the empty box, curious… and noticed a flash out the window, jumping and hiding behind the living room window curtain.

A human body had just flashed, impossibly fast, up a tree outside her front lawn. She watched that human body jump, inhuman and almost insect-like, between the trees and finally off her property. That face had been…

… Greg Arkin's? Lana suddenly felt panicked.

She pulled out her cell phone, found Grace's contact information, and called her. "Grace? Can I - look, I'm home alone, can I tell you about something that just happened?"

"Uh - sure," said Grace over the phone, sounding confused but willing.

Lana forced out the words, scared and alone in the big empty house, her sentences tumbling over each other. "And I don't know what's going on and I don't know why I called you, but I just thought -"

"It's okay. It's okay, Lana. Deep breaths," said Grace in a soothing voice. Lana took several deep breaths. "Look - I don't think Greg will hurt you, but just in case, me, Abby, and Chloe will look into it, alright?"

* * *

At school the next day, Lana came to school just like always but Greg did not. As promised, Grace met up with Chloe and Abby in the Torch main office.

"So is Greg Arkin still the science reporter for the Torch?" Grace asked curiously.

"Well, if your definition of a reporter is someone who actually turns in articles, then no. Greg hasn't shown his face in the office for like a week," said Chloe.

"So we think he's… been becoming a massive insect instead?" said Abby skeptically.

"The traits are all there in Lana's description. He's obsessed with bugs; he left butterflies on her doorstep," said Grace intently. "And it would explain his sudden change in physical appearance."

"Well," said Chloe, "I found an article about Amazonian tribesmen who took on traits of the insects they'd been bitten by, but nothing as extreme as what Lana was talking about. Abby, have any luck?"

"Only that Greg didn't move to Smallville until after the meteor shower, so he couldn't have been exposed to the blast," said Abby, wincing.

"... Yeah, but his bugs could have been," said Chloe, the light of realization coming to her eyes. "Think about it. Pieces of that meteor rock are buried all over Smallville. The whole habitat's infected. So when boy catches bugs and bugs bite boy… you end up with bug boy."

"Then why hasn't it happened years before this?" Abby pointed out.

"Yeah, Chloe, you can't even walk out your front door in the summertime without being bitten by a mosquito. Why don't we have a whole town of bug people?" said Grace skeptically.

"Because you need a certain level of toxins to cause a mutation," said Chloe. "Those Amazonian tribesmen were all attacked by swarms."

"With how bug obsessed Greg was, he definitely could have kept tanks of bugs in his room," Abby suggested.

"Yeah, maybe they got sick of the view and staged a revolt," said Grace curiously.

"Well, according to this, bugs have a very short life cycle," Chloe pointed out, holding up her sheet of paper. "So if he really has gone Kafka, let's hope he isn't in the mating phase."

* * *

Lana was feeding her horses in her stable after school. Whitney walked up hesitantly and stood before her. Lana paused, giving him a cool, reserved stare.

"Your aunt said you were out here," said Whitney carefully.

"How are you feeling?" Lana asked stiffly.

"Better. That's not why I'm here, though," he admitted. "Lana, you should know." He took a deep breath. "That Greg's crush on you has always seemed a little bit creepy to me. Sometimes he followed you around when you weren't aware of it. And… that's why I chose him as Scarecrow. It's not a good excuse, but you should know why I did it. I… I guess I got scared and angry and did something stupid. I would do anything to take that back."

"... Greg said you had no reason, but that didn't seem right to me," Lana admitted. "Whitney, you're right, it's not a good excuse. Why didn't you just tell me, talk to me?"

"I didn't want to scare you. I'm sorry," said Whitney.

"It's too late, Whitney. She's mine now," Greg's voice echoed from down the stable. They whirled around and he was standing there.

"... Greg?" Lana asked softly, worried.

"Get away from her," Whitney growled, and he made a threatening move toward Greg - who promptly threw him across the stable with a bang. Whitney slumped, unconscious.

"Greg, what's going on?" Lana said quickly, scared, stiffening.

"It's time," he said quietly.

"Time for what?!" she demanded in a high voice, paling.

Greg smiled. "For us."

* * *

Abby, Chloe, and Grace were just putting the paper to bed after school when Grace got a call on her cell phone - again. It was Whitney.

"Grace - Kent - Look, Lana's missing. I just woke up in Lana's stable. Greg attacked us," said Whitney in a hard voice, one that had a tremble of fear underneath us. "And I woke up alone. I don't know where Arkin and Lana are."

Grace talked fast for a couple of minutes, frowning and neutral, then she hung up and turned to her friends. "Whitney needs us to meet him at Greg Arkin's house," she said. "I'll fill you in on the way. Defense Team thing."

"Well, let's get to it, then," said Chloe, and the three girls hurried out of the Torch office, shutting the door behind them.

* * *

"So you guys think these meteor rocks cause mutations? And Greg has turned into a… bug?" Whitney said slowly outside Greg's house that afternoon.

"Look, I know it sounds crazy. Just trust us and work with us for a few minutes. There'll be evidence in here if we're right," Grace sighed.

The four of them looked through the windows of the darkened home.

"It doesn't look like anyone's home," Chloe said.

"The place is a mess, too," said Abby, wrinkling her nose, squinting through her glasses. "Like no one's been cleaning it up."

Chloe opened a window. "You guys, come here."

"Great. Breaking and entering," Whitney sighed in an undertone.

"You want your girlfriend back, right?" Grace muttered back to him. "Suck it up."

* * *

And then came the bathroom - complete with gobs of shredded, bloody skin around the clogged shower drain. The whole house had been disgusting, filled with web-like materials and muddy hand and footprints like something had been climbing around the walls.

But this really took the cake.

"This is really fucking creepy," said Whitney, sounding jumpy. "I think you guys might have been right." He looked morbidly fascinated by the lumps of skin.

"Ugh, I think I'm going to throw up," said Abby, hand to her mouth.

"I think it's skin. Greg must have been molting," said Grace, her eyes wide. "That means the next phase is - mating."

She looked up, and she and Whitney shared a horrified glance.

"This is what we've been trying to protect Smallville from," said Grace seriously. "We've been trying to save people from things like this."

But Chloe was already down the hall in Greg's room. "You guys better come in here! Guys?"

They ran into the room, where in between the cobwebs a home videotape of Lana was playing on the tiny TV. The kind of home videotape she hadn't known was being filmed.

"... He really was stalking… and filming her…" said Whitney slowly, horror filling his expression.

"I think Greg's found his mate," said Chloe grimly.

But Grace had gone to a gigantic lump of cobweb in the corner. "Grace, what do you see?" Chloe asked.

"I'm not sure," said Grace with at least faux calm, eyes wide and alert as she grabbed hold of the lump of cobweb.

"Grace, be careful," said Abby worriedly.

"I don't like this." Even Chloe was starting to sound jumpy in the hot, steamy house.

"Here." And suddenly Whitney was behind Grace, calmly trying to help her open up the lump of cobweb. Grace froze at his close proximity, the warmth of his body right behind hers… Then they opened up the cobweb together.

The corpse of Greg's mother fell out. She was grey, her insides sucked dry, her face thin and shrivelled. Her eye sockets were dark, empty, staring gapes.

Grace swallowed. "... Chloe… please tell me that insects treat their mates better than their mothers."

"No such luck, I'm afraid," said Chloe slowly. "I'm not sure what this says about mankind and nature… but mothers and mates get treated about the same way. It's positively Freudian."

"... Lana," Grace breathed, true fear crossing her face.

* * *

Outside the house, they called Pete Ross.

"He'd know where Greg might go," said Grace worriedly. "Pete Ross and Greg Arkin used to be best friends as little kids, back before they drifted apart. And Pete - he's your football teammate, right, Whitney?"

"Yeah, one of the freshman recruits, super popular. I have his number," said Whitney seriously; he looked significantly paler than usual. "Yeah, I'll - I'll call him."

They called Pete and put him on speaker.

"Hey, Pete. If Greg Arkin were really desperate, do you know where he'd go? I… I think he's with Lana," said Whitney in a shaky, faux calm voice.

"Greg? Wow, it's been awhile," said Pete Ross over the phone slowly. "We haven't talked in a couple of years. Greg's father left the family when he was in seventh grade and he just stopped calling after that…

"But, if I'd hazard a guess, I'd say the killer tree fort his Dad built for him out in the woods. Not a great thing for people who don't like heights -"

"Great," Grace muttered, and Abby gave her a wry smile, knowing the old phobia.

"But we always thought it was awesome. I'd say he'd go there because it'd remind him of his Dad. His Dad always was nicer to him than his Mom," Pete admitted. "Greg's Mom was always really strict, kind of a hardass."

"Great. Where is it?" said Whitney quickly.

"By the old Creekside Foundry," said Pete, still sounding puzzled.

"Great. Thanks, Pete. I owe you one, man," said Whitney firmly, and he hung up and turned to the three girls.

"Since Grace hates heights, she goes into town and brings the police," said Abby, as she and Chloe looked sideways at Grace. "The rest of us go for the Foundry in Whitney's car he drove here."

"Great, sounds like a good idea," said Whitney quickly, clearly a man of action. "Let's do it."

Of course, the minute Grace was around the side of Greg Arkin's house, she super-speeded toward the Foundry instead.

* * *

Grace ran at super-speed to the tree fort and up the ladder. She found Lana on the tree fort floor, under a blanket of cobwebs, unconscious.

"Get away from her!" Greg was in the corner, watching Grace like a hawk.

"Greg, I know what's happened to you," said Grace cautiously, in a stance.

"Well then you know that I've been freed," said Greg, smirking.

"No, you haven't. You're a slave to your instincts," said Grace warningly.

"I have no rules, Kent," said Greg, standing and waving his hands wide. "I eat what I want, I go where I want, and I take what I want." His eyes flashed.

"You're not taking her!" Grace snapped.

"Well then try to stop me," Greg challenged.

He lunged at Grace and they both fell out of the tree fort. Grace hit the ground - and Greg wasn't there. Grace saw Greg running away; he jumped over a chain link fence.

Grace stood and followed.

* * *

She entered an old warehouse covered in rocks and metal walls - the old Creekside Foundry. Immediately, she began feeling nauseous, weak, in pain. She felt increasingly weaker, every step forced out of her, even as she mounted a wooden platform.

Greg walked right up behind her with a metal pipe and swung.

Grace went flying across the warehouse and landed painfully among some rocks. And that was when she saw it too late - meteor rock. The Foundry was covered with it. Her veins began to bulge green and she made horrible whining noises - inhuman clicking noises.

Noises she hadn't even known she was capable of making as she lay crippled with pain.

"What the hell…? She can't do anything," Greg realized with a wide, gaping, empty grin, approaching. "Hey, Kent. Did you know the Buffalo ant can lift up to thirty times its own body weight?" He lifted Grace full up into the air and threw her further with another sharp spurt of pain. Just because he could.

Grace forced herself to her hands and knees and crawled painfully behind a broken concrete shell.

"Kent? Kent, where are you?" Greg called jeeringly, clearly insane. He stalked around the Foundry, she hidden from his line of sight. "Come on out! I just want to play! Kent? Come out!"

But Grace was… returning to normal. She straightened, the green fading, her veins returning to normal, the color returning to her face. She reached around and felt the concrete wall.

"... Lead," she whispered. "The old concrete walls were lined with lead."

Lead. For some reason in that moment she thought fondly of Lex's box. It did figure, that he would accidentally give her a box that made her invulnerable to the very thing that could destroy her. Pity she didn't have it with her.

The wall would have to do.

Lead protected her from meteor rock.

"Give it up, Kent! You can't fight natural law! Only the strong survive," Greg hissed, bitterness perhaps lacing his voice. Grace lashed out and pinned him up against the concrete wall in a feat of supernatural speed and strength. Greg grinned through the pain. "Did you really think you could hide from me?"

Grace threw Greg. He landed against a support beam… and accidentally pulled a lever next to him on his way to his feet.

"Greg, watch out!" Grace gasped.

A huge piece of construction equipment landed on top of him with a thud, pinning him to the floor. Greg lay there, still, unconscious… and thousands of little bugs crawled out from around him.

Grace super-sped away. There was still one thing left to do.

* * *

Whitney, Chloe, and Abby found Lana in the tree fort and woke her up. Lana cried. Whitney hugged her and told her hush, it was okay, everything was okay now.

They explained the meteor rock mutation. "Grace was a big help, too," Chloe told Lana quietly, because Grace had been more of a help than Lana might ever know. "She went to get authorities."

Just then, cars rumbled below them.

Grace had run into town and come back with the police, who immediately rushed in a search for the area to find Greg. "Hey! Come look at this!" a member of the Smallville Sheriff's department called from the Foundry. "The damn kid's unconscious! He had some issue with his mutation!"

Grace walked smiling up to the rest of the group. "... Thank you," said Lana shakily with feel, smiling tremblingly.

"No problem," said Grace warmly. "I promised to look into it, didn't I?" Her eyes glinted, slightly teasing.

The five of them fell into step together.

"This has been… weird," said Whitney with feel.

"Stick around with us, it gets weirder," Abby joked.

Whitney looked them over, though his eyes lingered a second longer on Grace. "I think I'd like that," he said. He put his arm around Lana and they smiled at each other in agreement.

"... I'd like that as well," said Lana thoughtfully.

The five friends left the forest and the old Creekside Foundry together.


End file.
